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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 4, 1992                   TAG: 9201060182
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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GRUMMAN'S CLOSING: FAILURE OF IMAGINATION

THE GRUMMAN shutdown is a case of failed imagination. Daily we are treated with news stories of Americans teaching Soviet citizens how to convert themselves into capitalists, and yet we seem unsure about how to do it in our own country.

If Mr. Evans is interested in buying the plant and the employees want to keep their jobs, why don't they explore the possibilities of a joint purchase of the plant, with eventual equities to be worked out by future performance. In some cases, and under existing law, employee stock-ownership plans are highly flexible instruments and can have many advantages for both the buyer and sellers.

In trying to stimulate capitalism in Eastern Europe over the last few years, the U.S. government has helped develop techniques for workers, with no capital except future earnings from their own efforts, to buy plants. As a Foreign Service officer, it has always struck me as strange that we spend so much effort in exporting know-how that should be much more widely used in our own country. With just a little community effort, all of that could be changed. FRANKLIN STEWART MARION

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