MOVE TO TEXAS FAILS TO TEMPT MORE THAN 80

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993                   TAG: 9302100062
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
MOVE TO TEXAS FAILS TO TEMPT MORE THAN 80
About 80 Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction employees - less than half of those offered jobs - will leave Roanoke to work for the company's new owner in Texas.
Reedrill Inc. offered moves to 180 of the company's Roanoke employees, Bill Westmoreland, employee relations director, said Tuesday.
Others have refused to move because "their roots are there in the Roanoke Valley. . . . It's our loss," he said. After a visit here, Westmoreland said, "I don't blame them. It's a beautiful place."
Just two weeks ago, Westmoreland said he expected 110 to 115 of the Gardner-Denver workers would move to his company's plant at Sherman, Texas. "We wanted to bring those skills," he said.
The Roanoke workers "have a high level of skill. . . . They have product knowledge in their heads," he said.
Reedrill is hiring machinists in Texas to fill jobs rejected by Roanokers, and about a dozen of those new employees will come to Roanoke for four or five weeks of training before returning to Texas to work.
While Reedrill is gearing up to move the drill lines, LeRoi International, a Sidney, Ohio, company, will move in. That outfit said Tuesday it has bought Gardner-Denver's portable air-compressor product line and is opening a parts and repair branch in Roanoke.
Four former Gardner-Denver employees have been hired to run the parts business at 1401-A Coulter Drive, N.W., near Roanoke Regional Airport.
Gardner-Denver compressors, which accounted for a small portion of the division's business, will be made by LeRoi at its Sidney plant, north of Dayton. Parts will be distributed from Roanoke to Gardner-Denver's market in South America, Europe, Canada and throughout the United States, said Bruce Toal, a vice president. LeRoi, a maker and seller of air compressors, has about 250 employees.
In Texas, Westmoreland said, Reedrill has about 180 employees at its drill manufacturing plant and expects to grow to 300 by the end of June. The work force may expand in another year and a half, he said.
The first Roanoke workers will move to Texas the week of Feb. 22 and production will be phased out in Roanoke by June, Westmoreland said. Although some employees have been laid off, "we still have a pretty hefty production schedule."
The company wants to ensure an adequate stock of drilling products to carry it through the move, he said. "We don't want idle time" in the factory.
With the start of Gardner-Denver layoffs, workers are asking the Virginia Employment Commission about benefits, said Marjorie Skidmore, job service manager in Roanoke.
She said that the only machinists' jobs that might be available in the Roanoke Valley are in small shops. Some jobs have been advertised in Lynchburg for lower pay than the approximately $11.50 an hour at Gardner-Denver, Skidmore said.
At initial meetings with the Gardner-Denver employees, the VEC staff told them they probably would be forced to take jobs at lower pay if they remain in the Roanoke Valley, she said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB