ILWU NEGOTIATIONS WITH PMA RESUME TODAY

ILWU NEGOTIATIONS WITH PMA RESUME TODAY    After a Monday filled with rallies organized in Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles by the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, the union and the Pacific Maritime Association are expected to resume negotiations today.
   “There’s not going to be any small talk at the table tomorrow. We’re going to start hard and see where it goes,” Jack Suite, the PMA’s director of contracting, told AS+. “If we don’t get very far, then the PMA will ask that both sides go to a mediator.”
   Negotiations between employers and the union have been on a three-week hiatus.
   In recent days, the ILWU alleged that the Bush administration has threaten to use the National Guard to run ports in Oregon, California and Washington if the ILWU doesn’t accept terms proposed by the PMA.
   “The government said these weren’t threats, that they were just giving us information they thought we should know. This is mobster talk,” Steve Stallone, a spokesman for the ILWU, said in a New York Times interview on Sunday.
   Stallone said the PMA “has no incentive to negotiate seriously, because the government is standing by, ready to act against the union.”
   “The reality is that these negotiations have some visibility, and the Bush administration is concerned about their outcome,” Suite told AS+ Monday. “I’m not aware of any such specific threats, although obviously the government carries a big stick.”
   When negotiations resume on Tuesday afternoon, “there won’t be any federal people sitting around in rooms,” Suite said. “We really hope the air will clear and we can move ahead on the basis of proposals that have already been made.”