HANDS ACROSS THE SEWING MACHINE

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

DATE: THURSDAY, January 21, 1993                   TAG: 9301210131
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
HANDS ACROSS THE SEWING MACHINE
Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Happy New Year! in Vietnamese, was the greeting at an unusual luncheon at Maid Bess Corp. plant cafeteria in Salem Wednesday.
The Vietnamese community, which has 55 workers at the Salem apparel plant, was honored at the outset of Tet, its festive new year's celebration.
Maid Bess is generally considered the largest Roanoke Valley employer of Vietnamese and other foreign-born workers, according to the staff of the Roanoke Refugee Resettlement Office. Other employees at the sewing plant are from Laos, Cambodia, Honduras, Haiti, Ethiopia, Poland and Germany.
The company has almost 100 workers from other parts of the world and some have not yet learned to speak English. The refugee staff works on that through tutoring.
After the annual U.S. style observance of Christmas and New Year's, the company wanted to recognize the traditions of its largest foreign group, said Glenn Thornhill Jr., Maid Bess president, and Dick Robers, executive vice president.
The Vietnamese "were so excited" when they heard about the luncheon plans, said Candi Cline, a Vietnamese sewing machine operator who often interprets when language problems arise at the plant.
In a luncheon marked by flowers, gifts and photographs, they dined on shrimp and chicken salad, egg and meat rolls, fried rice and bamboo bean cake, catered by the Asian French Cafe.
The Vietnamese community in the Roanoke Valley, estimated at more than 750 people, will hold its own Tet celebration Saturday at the American Legion building in Salem.
Hong Nguyen, a sewing machine operator, gave Thornhill a plaque bearing the inscription, "Thank you for such a nice place to work." In a brief speech in Vietnamese, he thanked the company for "fellowship and working relations."
"We would not be where we are today without this group," Thornhill said.
These workers are "excellent, dependable, so economically motivated. We couldn't ask for more," he said. However, in the long run, most of the Vietnamese gain an education and move up to better jobs "and that's the way it should be," Thornhill said.
Robers said he hopes the Tet luncheon will become an annual event.
The company, owned by the Thornhill family, has about 2,000 employees at plants in Dublin, Galax, Lebanon, Castlewood, Salem and Jefferson, N.C.
Last year, Maid Bess increased its Salem work force by more than 100 to exceed 500 "and we hope to employ 50 to 60 more this year," Thornhill said.
Maid Bess, a maker of uniforms for nurses, laboratory workers and others in the health-care field, has actively recruited Vietnamese workers for years, Thornhill said. `I'd like to have another 100," he added.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB