80 LEAVING FOR TEXAS

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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 23, 1993                   TAG: 9301230168
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
80 LEAVING FOR TEXAS
About 80 Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction Division employees have accepted offers to work for the company's new owner, Reedrill Inc., and will leave Roanoke for Sherman, Texas.
Reedrill spokesman Bill Westmoreland predicted Friday that 110 to 115 people probably will move with the company. He said Reedrill offered jobs to 180 people, slightly less than half of the Gardner-Denver work force of 400.
The move will come in phases, he said, and the transfer decision period probably "will stretch out over a few weeks."
The plant is expected to close in this year's second quarter. Some of the workers who expect to be unemployed already have registered with the Virginia Employment Commission for jobless benefits, even though they are still working.
The plant closing comes at the same time that First Union Corp., the buyer of Dominion Bankshares Corp., said it will eliminate about 850 Dominion jobs.
Cooper Industries, Houston parent of Gardner-Denver, announced in November the sale of its line of rotary blast hole and percussive rock drill equipment. The sale price was not reported.
Cooper decided to sell the product lines and close the 10-year-old Roanoke plant because of a "continued depression in our markets," Gardner-Denver President Walter Callahan said last fall.
Westmoreland, human resources director for Reedrill, said some of the Roanoke workers are house-hunting in Texas. Those on the administrative staff will be among the first to go because "they can operate here as easily as in Roanoke," he said from Sherman.
The manufacturing group probably will continue to assemble the drilling equipment in the Roanoke plant "for another three or four or five months," he said.
Those who transfer will, "with a few exceptions," draw the same pay and benefits from Reedrill as they received at the Roanoke plant, he said.
Factory production workers will be the largest group that will move. Transfers also were offered accounting, sales and other office workers. Westmoreland said the company knew a substantial number of Gardner-Denver workers would not transfer because they would not want to uproot their families.
The Gardner-Denver name on drilling equipment "is the most attractive thing we're buying. It's known around the world," he said.
Announcement of the plant closing has attracted the attention of "two or three industrial prospects who are looking at this region," said Virgil Thompson of the Virginia Employment Commission's Roanoke office. "But that doesn't mean they'll locate here," he quickly added.
Roanoke's economic development staff is marketing the 340,000-square-foot Gardner-Denver building in the Centre for Industry and Technology. "We've begun making people aware" the building will be available for use this year, said Brian Wishneff, city economic development chief.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB