CLOSING SEARS CENTER HAS TO HIRE HUNDREDS

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

DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993                   TAG: 9304080121
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
CLOSING SEARS CENTER HAS TO HIRE HUNDREDS
A sale of catalog merchandise is forcing Sears, Roebuck and Co. to hire hundreds of workers at the Roanoke telecatalog center it expects to close by August.
The retailer said Wednesday a 30 percent price cut on many Sears catalog items has generated more phone calls than the local order-taking center can handle.
About 160 people were hired this week and another 400 probably will be needed to answer the ringing phones, said Tom McVaney, manager of the center on Thirlane Road Northwest.
Ironically, the employment rush comes only months before the center is scheduled to close permanently, eliminating about 1,300 jobs. Chicago-based Sears in January decided to get out of the catalog business and shut telecatalog centers in Roanoke and 10 other cities.
So, as Sears employees scurry to handle booming business before the shutdown, the company's headquarters staff is negotiating with "two or three companies" who may buy the Roanoke operation.
If those talks are successful, another catalog company could "take everything" - equipment and personnel - in a turnkey operation, McVaney said.
In negotiations, a prospective buyer must consider training Sears people for its own way of doing business, as well as adapting the company's management information system, McVaney said.
The questions will be "Do we have a match? . . . Can what exists in Roanoke be matched with another company?" McVaney said.
The Sears center in Roanoke is considered by the telemarketing and mail-order industries as a state-of-the-art leader in telecataloging. It is generally cited for its sophisticated equipment and the efficiency of employees.
McVaney said he asked the Virginia Employment Commission to find 1,000 part-time workers in hopes "that we might get 500 or 600," McVaney said.
Marjorie Skidmore, job service manager for the VEC in Roanoke, said her staff has been "working since Monday and we found a couple hundred." VEC interviewers "are confident we'll get what they need," she added.
To handle the surge of orders from all 50 states, the center employees are starting at 6 a.m., an hour earlier than usual, and some are working until 11 p.m. Instead of the usual four-hour shifts, many are working eight hours a day to handle the greater load, McVaney said.
`We're allowing relatives to come in and we're telling employees to go find others in the neighborhood, anybody who can do the job," he said.
McVaney said he hasn't seen anything like the rush of orders since he joined the company in 1966.
The orders are drawing from the inventories at Sears' Greensboro, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio, distribution centers.
At noon Wednesday, McVaney's desktop monitor counted 156 calls on hold from catalog shoppers all over the country. The equipment showed the average call was waiting almost 5 minutes before being helped, he said.
The new business probably ensures that the Roanoke center will be the last of the 11 to close, he said. Closing could be "in August or later, things are so fluid."
One center employee who asked not to be identified said some callers "tell us they've been trying to get through for two or three days." Quite a few calls came from the West Coast and the lines "are busy all the time," he said.
The closing catalog business "has been wild," said Joe Sears, manager of the Sears retail store at Roanoke's Valley View Mall. His store had a double-digit sales increase from last year until the March blizzard stopped the growth, he said, but business is coming back in April.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB