Portugal’s fuel-tanker drivers will suspend a five-day-old strike that led to fuel rationing at filling stations and negotiate with employers in government-brokered talks, their union said.
The employer association ANTRAM had earlier rejected the union’s offer to negotiate better salaries and working conditions unless the strike was suspended or called off.
“The union understands that the conditions are now in place for all parties to sit down at the negotiating table,” the SNMMP union said in a statement.
“We announce the temporary suspension of the strike from the time the meeting, to be called by the government, begins” and until the union’s plenary meeting on Sunday, it added.
Government officials and ANTRAM had no immediate comment.
Drivers began an indefinite strike on Monday, the second of the year after similar damaging industrial action in April.
