MANUFACTURERS TAKING CAUTIOUS VIEW OF '92

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

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201280404
SECTION: ECONOMY                    PAGE: 17   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
MANUFACTURERS TAKING CAUTIOUS VIEW OF '92
Last year's recession brought Virginia manufacturers growing numbers of factory layoffs, increased pressures for greater productivity and worries about consumer confidence.
A paradox of the recession is that many factories, depending on their markets, are working at full force. Although the unemployment rate has risen gradually, the people who are working use a variety of products and services.
The average manufacturing work-week in the state was 41.3 hours as of the most recent report, for November. In the Roanoke area, the average was even higher, 42.2 hours, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. That is an average of 2.2 hours of overtime in factories.
Layoff numbers were reflected in the Roanoke area factory employment in November of 18,600, down 300 from October and 400 from September. Factory work forces in the Roanoke area were down 1,100 from November 1990, the VEC said.
Many of last year's factory layoffs in the Roanoke Valley were at Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction, Ingersoll-Rand's Rock Drill Division, ITT, Roanoke Electric Steel and Medeco Security Locks.
State factory work forces declined by 3,400 in November and by 9,500 during the past year, according to VEC figures.
In an annual economic survey of the Roanoke Times & World-News, more than half of the 48 manufacturers responding said they're cautious about the industrial outlook in 1992. Of the 48 manufacturers, 28 said they're cautious, eight are concerned and 12 are optimistic.
In the survey, an apparel company said consumers are buying more at discount stores and a furniture maker said supplies are greater than the demand.
In Richmond, John MacIlroy, president of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, said he found "a very dramatic and pronounced sense of economic concern among many sectors of manufacturing" as he traveled across the state last fall.
This quick change of mood, "coupled with political uneasiness, even disaffection," he said, led to a sense that a guiding principle for the current General Assembly session should be to build and rebuild confidence through prudent fiscal policies.
MacIlroy has been lobbying the legislature against higher taxes. "We don't believe that we can tax ourselves out of the recession . . . A better solution would be to continue making tough choices on which services are essential and which can be subordinated," he said. Businesses "make painful cuts every day," MacIlroy said.
The business slump is reflected in the slowdown of new and expanding companies, as charted by the state Department of Economic Development. Almost 60 percent of the jobs created in the state last year were in manufacturing.
In 1991, the department said, the total of 11,732 new jobs created at new and expanding companies in the state was down 21 percent from 1990. The planned investment fell by 51 percent. Fifty-two new manufacturing companies brought 4,083 jobs and 74 expanding factories added 2,815 jobs last year.
Among the largest new and expanding factories in Western Virginia were Mohawk Rubber, proposing to add more than 800 jobs in Salem by the mid-1990s, and Owens-Corning Fiberglass, planning to add up to 300 at a new window assembly plant in Martinsville.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB