Bowers calls high-level meeting after 3 ILA officials indicted

Bowers calls high-level meeting after 3 ILA officials indicted    John Bowers, president of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), has called for a meeting of the ILA's executive council following the indictments last week by federal prosecutors of three of the union's officials on charges of extortion and conspiracy.
   Those indicted, Al Cernadas, Harold Daggett, and Arthur Coffey, are likely to be suspended with pay from their union duties 'for an interim period,' a union spokesman told Shippers' NewsWire.
   Cernadas, the ILA's executive vice president, had been rumored to be a likely successor to Bowers. Daggett leads a union local in New Jersey. Coffey is a Miami-based ILA vice president.
   Federal prosecutors alleged that Cernadas, Daggett and Coffey conspired to award the ILA's heath care contracts to providers tainted by organized crime. Prosecutors also alleged that all three were associates of the Genovese mafia family.