ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 9, 1995 TAG: 9512100016
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
THE ADS PORTRAY the company as a community pillar and are meant, in part, to mend any ill feelings residents harbor from a 12-week strike at the Salem plant in 1994.
Yokohama Tire Corp. has sprinkled the valley with a half-dozen billboards, advertising it hopes will strengthen its spotty image and ties with employees at its Salem factory.
The ads portray the company, a unit of Tokyo-based Yokohama Rubber Co., as a community pillar and its workers as average folks who might live next door.
In part, the campaign is to mend any ill feelings Roanoke Valley residents still harbor from a bitter 12-week strike over work schedules in 1994, said Yokohama spokesman Gary Van Zandt.
The company ultimately won the right to schedule workers in shifts allowing it to operate the plant seven days a week. Union members approved the contract and went back to work in October 1994.
The billboard campaign is a belated gesture because company officials took extra time to get the ad campaign right, Van Zandt said. Radio and TV spots and an open house also are planned.
"The whole aim of this thing is to increase the goodwill of the corporation and the company. They had a strike there, and there is still a good deal of animosity," he said.
The ads also highlight what for the company are sources of pride: the Salem employees and the plant's strong community ties, said Dan Hunter, a Yokohama marketing vice president, in a prepared release.
However, Wayne Friend, president of the employee union at Yokohama in Salem, took issue with a phrase in the ad: "We've been neighbors for 26 years."
Yokohama bought the Salem plant in 1989 from Mohawk Rubber Co., which had built it in 1969, and after the purchase paid $150 million to upgrade the facility.
"It's insinuating Yokohama has been here for 26 years, when in fact they've only been here for six years," Friend said.
He said the company has a reason to want to cultivate maximum community support, even if it must stretch the truth: Contract negotiations with the union are scheduled in 1997. Although he has not received official information from the company, Friend predicted Yokohama will ask the union to grant concessions it won't want to give.
Plant manager Jim Hawk said the plant is losing money, but the company has not told the union it will ask for concessions. He said he has met with employees to "give them some key pointers on what we can do to improve the situation and turn this company around."
The company selected and photographed a half-dozen employees whose faces loom in billboard blowups. One of the workers chosen for the display is Eddie Robtison who will be sworn in Sunday to replace Friend at Local 1023 of the United Steelworkers. The union was a branch of the United Rubber Workers at the time of the strike, but this year the two unions merged.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Yokohama Tire Corp. put up severalby CNBbillboards like this one on Jefferson Street in Roanoke.