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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993                   TAG: 9302160332
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

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DIVIDED WE FALL

IN RESPONSE to the question concerning the retention of jobs in the Roanoke Valley:

It is too late to save my job and the hundreds more at Gardner-Denver, but perhaps this whole fiasco can be looked back upon and a lesson can be learned.

First, the whole valley is intertwined. Folks do not stop at county or city-limit signs when they go out to spend their money. The boundary lines exist on maps, tax rolls and school zones. The various governments may banter back and forth over various issues, but they must put aside the rhetoric to save this valley from financial collapse.

There are no less than four different committees and consortiums all dedicated to the betterment of this community. Now, each has its own director or administration, and each has its own project and goals that it wants to push through with the public's blessing. All this is well and good, but why in the world must this task be tackled by each group?

I would love to see the headline in all the valley's newspapers announce the unprecedented, collaborative event of the decade in which local governments lay aside differences, work together to tout the valley's benefits and bring good jobs back to the valley.

Second, I'd like to borrow some material from the Jan. 18 issue of Industry Week magazine. The chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers "wishes more Americans, especially government policymakers, were better informed about the wealth-creating engine that drives the U.S. economy." Further, "U.S. manufacturing productivity has been increasing much faster than the economy as a whole [at a rate of better than 3 percent a year since 1983] and in the second quarter of last year, the nation's productivity climbed at an annual rate of 5.4 percent."

These are some tremendously encouraging words and figures. But wait, consider the source. It comes from none other than Robert Cizik, chief executive officer of Cooper Industries, parent company of the soon-defunct Gardner-Denver.

And so it appears that useless chitchat (bovine excretion) exists not only at upper levels of corporate America, but also among our own service-industry-losing, multicommitteed local governments. DONALD R. COLE BLUE RIDGE

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