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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 10, 1993                   TAG: 9306090380
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN BUSINESS

Insurance adjusters said Wednesday they're busy handling claims from last Friday's storm in the Roanoke and Lynchburg areas. Nobody had any figures, but a spokeswoman for Gay & Taylor Inc. said the storm in Roanoke "was not a catastrophe."

Gay & Taylor is investigating more claims than usual, she said, most of them from wind damage.

John Whitley, a spokesman at GAB Business Services Inc., said adjusters are seeing hail damage, wind damage, downed trees and falling trees that hit houses. The back-to-back storms Friday, he said, caused more damage than the March 13 blizzard.

A spokeswoman at GAB said there were more claims than during the blizzard. "Lynchburg is terrible," she said.

At Crawford & Company, a spokesman said all of the adjusters were out "looking at losses." He, too, said the situation was worse than during the blizzard. - Staff report

Illinois Central settles race-bias suit

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. - A railroad said Wednesday it will pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to hire black workers in the 1970s.

Illinois Central Railroad said it wasn't admitting wrongdoing, but wanted to settle the class-action suit to bring the lengthy case to a close.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the railroad but was reversed on appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined in 1987 to review the case. It went back to U.S. District Court and a judge ruled last year that the plaintiffs could not recover punitive or compensatory damages, only back pay and damages from emotional distress. - Associated Press

GM plant may adopt unusual schedule

DETROIT - Union leaders at General Motors' Flint Truck & Bus assembly plant are close to accepting an innovative work schedule that would bring back 1,000 laid-off workers, but would not guarantee the factory's future beyond 1995.

The schedule rotates three crews on two shifts of four 10-hour days each week.

Flint builds GM's full-size vans, which will be redesigned for the 1996 model year and built somewhere else.

Charles Coy, president of UAW Local 598 in Flint, says he is willing to consider the three-crew, two-shift schedule because it requires the hiring of 1,000 workers, which would cover nearly all of the local's 770 members on indefinite layoff. The plant now employs about 2,900 hourly workers. - Knight-Ridder/Tribune

Ashland accuses miners of violence

Ashland Coal Inc. Wednesday charged striking union miners with turning to "violence and intimidation on the picket line," and said the miners attacked trucks delivering supplies to an Ashland mine in Logan County, W.Va.

Ashland said the pickets, members of the United Mine Workers of America, first blocked trucks trying to enter the Dal-Tex Coal Corp. mining complex, then pelted the trucks with rocks. Several truck windows were broken, the radiator of the lead truck was punctured, and a truck occupant was hit by rocks, the company said.

"We were attempting to have a third party deliver supplies to the mine, on public roads," said David Todd, an Ashland Coal vice president in a telephone interview. "They were not strikebreakers . . . We think it's pretty serious stuff."

Also Tuesday, Peabody Coal Co., the largest U.S. producer, filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Springfield, Ill., seeking damages from the UMW for strikes and slowdowns at four of its operations during a 60-day labor contract extension in March and April.

"In the extension agreement, the UMW officers specifically promised in writing that the union would not engage in strikes or slowdowns. But before the ink was dry on the contract, the UMW started violating it," said Ryan Tew, a Peabody attorney.

The strike, against selected operations of Peabody Holding Co., Ziegler Coal Holding Co., Ashland Coal Inc., Arch Mineral Corp., Consol Inc., Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Co. and C.L.I. Corp., affects mines in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The UMW is trying to end moves by coal companies to shift production from union mines to non-union, affiliated subsidiaries and wants job guarantees for the union's 66,000 active miners.

No union-management talks have been held since May 3 and none are scheduled, said Thomas F. Hoffman, a spokesman for the Bituminous Coal Operators Association. - Journal of Commerce