The air traffic controllers trade union HSKKL said on Wednesday they decided to cancel a strike scheduled for Thursday, state agency Hina said.

Called to protest against burnout and overwork, union leader, Kresimir Rakoci, told reporters that they would continue negotiations with the management of the state-run air traffic control instead.

The union insists, he added, on demands related exclusively to air traffic safety, namely the burnout of air traffic controllers due to the huge volume of work they do, as a result of the fact that there are “far too few” of them to handle that traffic.

“Our priority is the safety of air traffic and the provisions of the collective agreement concerning working hours and work schedules. The financial part, in light of the overall situation both in the country and in the world due to inflation, is secondary,” Rakoci added.

Hina did not specify what the union’s demands entailed.

“If no agreement is reached, and if a satisfactory agreement is not found regarding working hours, overtime hours, and air traffic control burnout, of course, we will have to resort to certain industrial actions,” he said.

The announced strike by air traffic controllers “would have resulted in chaos at domestic airports,” Hina said, because about 50 percent of all flights would have ended up canceled.