Brazil Dock Workers Scrap Port Strike Plans

Brazil's National Federation of Stevedores, known as FNE, on Wednesday scrapped a plan for a nationwide strike over hiring and pension practices in peak soy exporting season.

"We have suspended the strike in order to give the government more time" to make an offer, FNE President Wilton Barreto told Reuters by phone from Brasilia. He said the union had not decided on a date to reconsider a strike.

Stevedores walked off the job on several occasions last year to protest a law Congress passed that allows the sale of port terminals to private companies because they feared union jobs could be jeopardized.