ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 22, 1997                TAG: 9704220060
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-6  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON THE ROANOKE TIMES

YOKOHAMA TIRE WORKERS OFFER HELP AT DANVILLE STRIKE

Union workers in Salem face negotiations in July for a new contract.

Roanoke Valley tire workers offered help for a strike against the Danville factory and eight others of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., a union official said Monday.

"If you're in the tire business, you better be paying attention to it," said Mike Amos, vice president of the United Steelworkers local at Yokohama Tire Corp. in Salem.

To his offer of help to the union's local in Danville, he was told none is needed now.

Yokohama's union, representing more than 800 of the local plant's workers, faces negotiating a new contact by July 23 with the U.S. unit of Tokyo-based Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. The company and union will need to come to terms on issues including the company's need for higher output per worker, the Salem plant's manager, Jim Hawk, has said.

In an interview Monday, Amos did not discuss contract issues at Yokohama, though at least one parallel seems apparent. He said Firestone-Bridgestone and Goodyear first asked their unions to give up wage and benefit increases to help the companies make more money.

"Get more work out of the same number of people is just what they are trying to do," Amos said. "It's just greed." He said he did not know specifics of negotiations, however.

Amos said he offered Local 1023's help Monday to the striking steelworkers in Danville, who belong to Local 831.

"They said keep 'em in their prayers," Amos said. The two unions have paired up in the past for rallies last year in Roanoke and Blacksburg against Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., the Nashville, Tenn.-based arm of Tokyo-based Bridgestone Corp.

Yokohama workers reported to their jobs as usual Monday.

Discussing the upcoming contract talks, Salem plant manager Hawk said in February that Yokohama would tell employees they must step up productivity to continue earning some of the Roanoke Valley's highest wages, $19 to $20 an hour. Higher productivity is part of a plan for the money-losing plant to turn a profit before 1999.

The union's president, Eddie Robtison, said productivity is up and workers are cooperating with the company's push for profit. He predicted that if the company will "allow production to catch up with the expense of modernizing the plant, profits will come."

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