Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303120034
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George Kegley
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
STAYING IN ROANOKE PAYS OFF
To their surprise, employees of the soon-to-be-closed Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction plant are finding jobs. Many have already left for other jobs, meaning the plant will operate with a declining staff for probably three more months.Less than one-fourth are still working. Weekly layoffs are expected to lead to the plant shutdown by June.
Only a small percentage are accepting offers to move to Texas with the new owner, Reedrill Inc.
Spouses' jobs, children in school, roots in the community and a general love of Western Virginia are workers' main reasons for staying here.
But it has required adjusting to lower pay than Gardner-Denver's average of about $12 an hour. And for workers moving to other fields, it means retraining despite already having skills and a worldwide reputation for making parts for drills, compressors and other equipment used in mining and construction.
George Garland, a Gardner-Denver machinist for 20 years, decided his field is fading and applied for a course in occupational therapy at Community Hospital's College of Health Sciences. He has a friend at the plant who's looking at nursing, Garland said.
Garland was not impressed with an offer to earn 3 cents an hour less than his Gardner-Denver pay to move to with the company to Sherman, Texas. His wife is a preschool teacher in the valley and "I can't get away from the mountains," he said.
Bob Jarvis wanted to move to Texas, but he wasn't invited by Gardner-Denver's new owners. At the age of 59 1/2, he's "hanging on from day to day" and considering retirement.
Jarvis and other machinists will work as long as they can in order to collect severance pay of $300 for each year of employment. Some men have found other work, but they're staying at Gardner-Denver to get severance pay.
At least five former Gardner-Denver workers are driving to Lynchburg for jobs at Belvac Production Machinery, a division of a Belgian firm that manufactures equipment to make aluminum cans.
Others have gone to Ingersoll-Rand's Rock Drill Division, a major Gardner-Denver competitor in Roanoke County, as well as to other area companies including Carolina Steel, Elizabeth Arden and Capco, a new Botetourt County outfit.
Tommy Hamblett, another machinist who's "riding it out," said he has a couple of feelers out for work. "It seemed like a lot of jobs opened up" when the plant was sold, he said.
Hamblett was "seriously considering" a Texas transfer, but he changed his mind and now he's "tickled to death that I didn't accept."
Hamblett and many other Gardner-Denver employees have questioned why Reedrill chose to shift the production to its smaller plant in Texas instead of taking over the Roanoke operation in a building that's just 9 years old. He hears that the Reedrill's cost of moving the equipment and some employees to Texas is $7 million.
A big unanswered question, he said, is why Cooper Industries, the Houston company that sold Gardner-Denver to Reedrill, is financing $36 million of Reedrill's purchase price of $40 million for the Roanoke plant. With such debt, "we feel Reedrill will be a member of the Cooper family in a couple of years," he said.
David Dingus, Reedrill president, could not be reached to reply on the workers' comments.
Gardner-Denver employees are bitter because "they got a raw deal," Hamblett said. He expects to lose $1,100 in vacation pay because of a change in company policy.
Frank Malasky of Christiansburg said the closing days of the plant are "sad and real stressful on everybody. It's hard to concentrate on work. Most of us would like to get it over with."
He's expecting "some real good" job openings this spring. His fellow workers are finding jobs, some for less money, but he predicts they will be back to their former pay in a year to 18 months.
"Whoever hires these people," he said, "will get a real good, skilled, knowledgeable work force."
Randy Stanley, who drives from Craig County to his machinist's job at Gardner-Denver, said he and several friends have heard of jobs in Charlotte, N.C. If they worked there, they would keep their homes and commute on weekends. That would be better than moving to Texas, he said.
Mary Houska, a Hollins College economics professor, is not surprised by the reluctance of Gardner-Denver people to move to Texas. People most willing to move are those who are not married and those who have children below the first-grade level, according to longstanding migration data, she said.
Traditionally, workers commute long distances to keep their homes in their own communities. In past years, workers at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant have traveled four or five hours from West Virginia to their jobs.
Other factors against business moves are the trauma of children leaving their homes and the risk of losing equity in a home if the economy declines, she said.
George Kegley covers economic development and regional industry.