ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602020053
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
Who's in charge at Tultex Corp. today was shaped by events dating from 1993.
That's when Tultex, feeling the pinch of falling retail orders, responded by cutting wages and laying off employees. Workers in Martinsville launched a fifth drive to unionize, and in August 1994 voted to be represented by what is now the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.
Within a month of that vote, the company announced that chief executive officer John Franck would step down from that job. Franck, 43 and the son of longtime company executive William Franck, had fought the union, which he didn't think was good for the company. According to sources familiar with him and the company at the time, he was wounded by personal attacks by the union during its organizing campaign and voluntarily stepped down as chief executive. He remains chairman of the board.
The chief executive's job went to Charles W. Davies Jr., 47, who had joined the company as a planning supervisor in 1973, left for other work outside the company in the same industry, and then returned to Tultex's management. He has been vice president of operations, executive vice president and most recently, before gaining the chief executive's office, president and chief operating officer.
Davies, who participated in the negotiations that led to a union contract in March 1995, is "focusing on changing the company in ways that it needs to change," said Bruce Raynor, Southern region director of the needletrades union.
About two weeks after Davies' promotion, the company hired O. Randolph Rollins, Franck's brother-in-law, who was Virginia's secretary of public safety under Gov. Douglas Wilder and practiced law with the Richmond-based firm of McGuire Woods Battle & Boothe.
Rollins, 52, is executive vice president, general counsel and chief financial officer. Baker Ellett, an aide to Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum, D-Roanoke, and a former special assistant under Rollins in state government, noted that his former boss handled touchy legal matters such as mergers and acquisitions.
"Nobody goes to that position if you're not packing a pretty good intellect," Ellet said. "Personalitywise, he's a pretty hard-working guy, definitely a nose-to-the-grindstone-type individual."
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines KEYWORDS: PROFILEby CNB