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

DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994                   TAG: 9408230043
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

WHY THE WORLD LIKES OUR WORK ETHIC

"I try not to ever call in sick," said the 20-year-old grocery store cashier and college student.

This attitude makes the Hardy resident symbolic of what some companies see in the Roanoke Valley: a place with a high work ethic.

Susan Yager, an executive with Hanover Direct Inc., a mail-order company, has seen areas that didn't have a "high work ethic," but she says it is hard to pin down what caused it.

She is bringing the distribution facilities for the Domestications division of Hanover to Roanoke County and said one reason the company decided to locate the catalog facilty in the area was because everyone praised the area's "work ethic."

"People do think of Roanoke when they think of work ethic," she said.

The area's low union membership and wage structure might also be attractions, say researchers who point out that in the South, work ethic historically has been related to "almost no unions."

Workers in union plants like Volvo-GM in New River Valley can have a high work ethic also, said Radford professor Adrienne Birecree. She suggests the nature of the job could be the key to how hard and well a person works.

For example, if your job is lowest in the pecking order, if you perceive it as finacially insignificant, you might not prize it so much.

The answer to "What is work ethic?" certainly isn't that Americans are lazy. The American work week, which is at least 40 hours long, has been growing, while other cultures have been cutting theirs.

For the full story, see Horizon, F1.