Montreal's engineers are suspending their strike in order to resume negotiations.
The 440 municipal workers walked off the job on Tuesday, shutting down work at half of the construction sites within the city of Montreal.
The members of the SPSPEM union, which includes city engineers responsible for supervising construction sites, as well as veterinarians and scientific researchers, have been without a contract for five years.
They rejected a recent offer to accept a nine percent salary cut and other concessions.
In a statement union officials said they wanted to resume negotiations, but found it "aberrant" that neither Mayor Denis Coderre nor Pierre Desrochers of the Executive Committee had reached out since their strike began.
The SPSPEM said its members will walk off the job once again if negotiations are fruitless.
