The agreement comes after 20 days at the negotiating table, the Sintraime union told Reuters, and includes a 4.5% average pay raise as well as improved benefits valid through 2014.

“Negotiations were difficult but we have reached an agreement," president Felix Herrera said, noting it is the first deal to be signed since 2008.

Sintraime represents workers in mining, metallurgy and rail, and has about 350 of Fenoco's 630 direct employees in its membership.

The agreement was in the process of being signed early Thursday, US time.

The 226-kilometre railway in Colombia is owned jointly by Goldman Sachs, Glencore Xstrata and US-based producer Drummond. Each of the operators manage their own rolling stockpiles, and combined they ship about 160,000 tonnes of coal to seaports – about half of the Andean nation’s exports.

Fenoco confirmed to Bloomberg that an agreement had been reached.

“The [Fenoco] agreement ends the [labor strife] in the sector that has left very high social and economic costs,” human resources and communication vice president Marie Joachim said.

The news is welcome, because if a work stoppage had come to pass it would have been Colombia’s third major strike in less than a year. A February Cerrejon walkoff lasted more than a month and union workers just went to work last Saturday at Drummond’s operations in the country following a 53-day stoppage on pay and working conditions.

Earlier this week, Colombian Mines and Energy minister Amylkar Acosta said the government was maintaining its target for 2013 coal production of 94 million tonnes.

While the estimate did not include the fallout from Drummond’s strike, the officials said he was hoping that producers could make up some of the strike-related costs prior to year’s end.