Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301260408
SECTION: NEW RIVER VALLEY ECONOMY PAGE: 37 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
FROM MINES TO ARSENAL, HE'S USED TO LAYOFFS
Roughly 320 people were laid off at the Radford arsenal in 1992. Gregory Smith was one of them.Smith knows about layoffs.
In 1986, Smith, now 43, was a mechanic and electrician for the Island Creek Coal Co. in Buchanan County when he was laid off.
At the time, mechanization was making coal miners' jobs more scarce and the prospect of long-term employment in the coal industry less likely. So Smith applied and was hired at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and moved his family to Radford.
But in August, Smith, a mechanic at the arsenal, once again found himself in the unemployment line.
Now, he's studying electronics at New River Community College in Dublin and collecting unemployment. Last week's massive layoff at the arsenal makes his return there even more unlikely.
For now, he works part-time at the Radford Best Western, where he does the night audit. The money he makes there is deducted from his unemployment benefits but it also helps extend the length of time he will receive benefits.
Following his graduation from Clinch Valley College in Wise in 1971, Smith taught the sixth and seventh grades at Givens Elementary School in Russell County.
Finding it hard to maintain a family on a teacher's salary, Smith returned to his native Buchanan County four years later to work in the mines.
Jobs were plentiful. In the mid- to late 1970s, the U.S. coal industry boomed as expensive foreign oil made coal an attractive alternative energy source.
"They were looking for people and begging for people to work," Smith recalled.
But the recession of the early 1980s changed the employment prospects in the coal industry. In 1982 and 1983, Smith was laid off for 14 months. He returned to work in January 1984 but was laid off again for his last time as a miner in June 1986.
A man offered him a mining job for $80 a day - well under the union wage - but he turned him down.
"He wanted a mechanic and a guy who would run a machine, too. He wanted to two jobs for the price of one."
Seeing no other job prospects and realizing his unemployment benefits were going to run out, Smith decided to leave Buchanan County.
"Other people hang on. They hear rumors and they hold onto that one thread of hope they've still got. They hope they'll get called back."
Many of those laid off were older men whose homes were paid for and their children grown. They didn't want to sever their ties with the mountains.
Smith, too, didn't want to leave his home county.
"Coal mining gets in your blood; it really gets in your blood," he said. "I really missed the coal mines for a while."
But unlike many unemployed in the coalfields, Smith had no family to look to for support. Both his mother and his father - who also was a coal miner - were dead.
Most of the people who left, Smith said, were people like him who had no family ties.
Smith, at the suggestion of a neighbor, put in an application at the arsenal in January 1987. He was hired that April.
Now, he faces the prospect of maybe having to move once more to find work.
"I search the paper all the time and there are really just not any jobs."
Smith weathered several layoffs at the arsenal, where employment has fallen from a post-Vietnam War high of nearly 4,800 in 1988 to roughly 2,000 following this month's pink slips.
At one time Smith had 70 mechanics under him on the arsenal's seniority list.
"I thought I had a pretty good cushion," he said.
When he was laid off at the arsenal Aug. 8, Smith was making $13.16 an hour, just a little more than he was making when he was laid off from Island Creek in 1986. Smith repaired and replaced pumps and fixed leaks in the acid-conditioning section of the plant.
"It was a good job; I liked it over there," Smith said during an interview at his Radford apartment, where he lives with his teen-age daughter.
Rumors tended to foretell layoffs at the arsenal. It was really tough working in that kind of environment when you weren't sure if you would have a job tomorrow, Smith said.
But as military bases are closed, cutbacks at the arsenal are inevitable, Smith said. "You can see the writing on the wall."
Hercules, which operates the arsenal for the Army, gave Smith the equivalent of six weeks pay, which was to be paid in conjunction with his unemployment benefits. The company gave him no help in trying to find another job and no retraining.
Seeing jobs evaporate in two different industries was depressing, Smith said.
"When I went into the coal mines, the superintendent told me: `You'll never have to worry about looking for another job. You can retire right here in this place.' "
Then, when he came to Radford, he was told the work at the arsenal was "pretty steady." Smith said, based on his past experience, the four years that he worked at the arsenal was pretty steady.
He worries, now, what the future will hold.
"I'm getting a few years on me. A lot of these companies are not going to look at me because of my age."
Still, Smith tries to keep a positive attitude.
"I've got a BA degree in education. I've got some marketable skills a lot of people don't have. I feel that eventually something is going to turn up."
He'll complete the solid-state electronics program at the college in another two years and hopes after that to find a job.
"I figure to get a good paying job but I'm going to have to go south or go to Richmond where the industry is," he said. "It's going to take two years to go through the program. I don't think my unemployment is going to last two years."