Washington, Aug 17: Negotiators for United Parcel Service and the Teamsters Union worked round-the-clock on Saturday in an effort to reach a settlement that would end a strike against the giant package delivery firm.

But it was uncertain whether the two sides moved any closer to agreement an ending the 13-day-old strike by 1,85,000 UPS workers that has paralyzed the nation's largest package delivery firm.

Spokesmen for chief federal mediator John Calhoun Wells and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, who was in the room with negotiators on Saturday, declined to say whether any progress had been made in more than 30 hours of virtually non-stop talks.

Teamsters spokesman Steve Trossman said: ``I haven't heard there has been any change since (Teamsters President Ron Carey's) news conference (Friday), but they continue to talk.''

A UPS spokeswoman in Atlanta said it was ``a positive sign they (the talks) have continued. I'm sure they will go on as long as both parties believe they are going well.'' Negotiators met through the night on Friday and only took a short break in the predawn hours on Saturday to freshen up and take naps before resuming talks.

``They're hunkered down,'' a labor department spokesman said. ``They just took a few hours off.''

The latest round of informal talks began on Thursday at the urging of Herman. President Bill Clinton has been resisting calls by UPS and some business groups to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act that would end the strike.In a letter to Clinton, the US Chamber of Commerce urged intervention, saying he was the only person who could help ``thousands of struggling employers and employees all across the country''.

``Each day that the teamsters strike against UPS is allowed to continue, the devastating impact on America's small business escalates ... without immediate relief from this strike these `mom and pop' operations cannot long survive,'' the letter said.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.