The Histadrut (Federation of Labor in Israel) announced yesterday (Thursday) night that next week's planned strike by Israel Railways workers had been called off. The railway workers had planned to seriously disrupt passenger and cargo traffic nationwide to protest the privatization of rolling stock maintenance.

An agreement was reached to continue the deadlocked talks with Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini and Israel Railways chairman Ori Yogev supervising the progress. The Histadrut had previously said that it was launching the strike because the privatization of the rolling stock maintenance to Canada's Bombardier Inc.