THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 10, 1995 TAG: 9508100497
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CARY, N.C. LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
A plethora of jobs here and in some other upscale Southeastern suburbs means workers, not managers, are calling more of the shots.
Managers, particularly in the service industries, are going to previously unimaginable lengths to keep workers, even tolerating behavior that once got workers fired.
``Bosses are in a defensive posture,'' Robert Gatewood, a professor of labor management at the University of Georgia, told The Wall Street Journal. ``Previously, managers could just use orders, authority and their power to terminate people.''
Workers have extended their lists of demands beyond benefits, extra vacation time and pay several bucks over the minimum wage. Some also demand that their jobs be enjoyable.
``If it's not fun anymore, I can just get a job anywhere else,'' said 22-year-old Valerie van Oosten, a waitress at Red Hot & Blue, a barbecue restaurant.
Her boss, John Golding, hustles to oblige, hosting employee golf tournaments twice a year. He already has customized work schedules and given frequent pay raises.
``You're putting up with more garbage than you would have a few years ago because you just want warm bodies,'' Golding said.
The Southeast's business boom has pulled hundreds of thousands of executives and other well-paid white-collar workers into the region during the past decade, swelling suburban areas such as Cary, which began as a bedroom community of Raleigh; Dunwoody, outside Atlanta; and Hendersonville, near Nashville, Tenn.
Employer-employee relations are being transformed across the Southeast as jobless rates in some suburban communities have dropped under 2 percent - well below economists' traditional definition of full employment.
In the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, workers at Arturo's Pizza & Pasta test manager Jonathan Fain's limits each day. The custom of workers taking a couple of beers after their shift has turned into workers knocking off a six-pack.
Scott Ramage, Cary town planner, said the number of 25- to 29-year-olds - the typical labor pool for restaurant work - rose at about half the rate of the rest of Cary's population in the past decade and will actually shrink during the next decade. March figures, the latest available, put the town's unemployment rate at just 1.7 percent. by CNB