Brazil Port Workers Unions Rule Out Thursday Strike

* Unions analyzing draft law on ports

* Key demands appear to have been met

(Reuters) - Brazil's main port labor unions said on Wednesday they have no plans to proceed with a strike they had threatened for Thursday while they study a proposed law outlining changes to regulations governing the country's ports.

"There is a plenary meeting tomorrow," said a press officer at the National Federation of Stevedores. "They are analyzing the measures."

She said that "on the face of it," the unions' demands that clauses threatening port workers' job security be scrapped appeared to have been met. The abolition of a special agency that doled out shifts among registered workers was their main objection to the initial draft of the law.

Brazil is in the middle of exporting an expected record soy harvest and coffee and sugar crops are due to hit its overburdened ports within weeks. Even a one-day stoppage would lengthen already-long queues for ships and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in demurrage costs for each day lost.

Union officials will now study the draft in detail and debate it with members before deciding whether to back it. Unions staged a six-hour stoppage to protest a first draft of the port reform bill on February 22.

A spokeswoman for a second union, Sindaport, which represents workers at the port management body, also ruled out the possibility they would strike on Thursday. Neither spokesperson could confirm if or when a strike would take place if the unions objected to the latest draft of the bill.

--Reporting by Peter Murphy