THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9407300147
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BUSINESS WEEKLY STAFF
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Buoyed by about $110 million in new ship-repair contracts over the past six weeks, Norshipco will recall about half of its roughly 1,000 laid-off workers by year's end, a company executive said. It would boost the shipyard's employment to about 1,700.
The biggest of the yard's new contracts was awarded Friday: a job worth up to $48.6 million over the next five years to make ``phased maintenance'' repairs to three Norfolk-based Navy oilers, the Monongahela, the Merrimack and the Platte.
The Navy accounts for more than 90 percent of the new contracts at Norshipco, Hampton Roads' second-largest private shipyard.
Though its previously announced layoff of thousands of workers is irreversible, Newport News Shipbuilding's fortunes have recently improved, and the shipyard ought to remain highly profitable for many years, said Tenneco Inc. Chairman Dana G. Mead.
``We feel that we've arrested the slide,'' Mead said in a telephone conference call with reporters.
Tenneco, the shipyard's Houston-base parent, reported that the yard's second-quarter operating profit totaled $53 million, the same as in the 1993 second quarter.
But the latest number was an improvement over this year's first quarter, when profits fell 13 percent from the year before.
Signet Banking Corp. plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs - almost 17 percent of its work force - in a restructuring of its core banking operation.
The Richmond-based parent of Signet Bank said it expects to shed 800 jobs by year-end and an additional 200 positions during 1995. The company's core banking unit employs 6,000, including 340 in Hampton Roads.
The Richmond-based parent of Signet Bank announced plans that would cut out almost one of every five jobs in a restructuring of Signet, the state's fourth-largest bank.
Passenger traffic at the Norfolk airport is up nearly 40 percent through the first six months of 1994, thanks to low-fare competition sparked by Continental Airlines' no-frills service.
And it may soon climb even more with the addition of a new carrier.
Business Express Airlines, a regional carrier, is returning to Norfolk International Airport in September with three daily flights to New York's Laguardia Airport.
The Portsmouth, N.H.-based airline, which will fly as Delta Connection, pulled out of Norfolk last year amid financial problems. Service is set to begin Sept. 12.
The Hampton Roads economy stumbled in June as employment growth in construction - a major driving force locally - began to slow, a regional economist said.
It was the second straight month that the area's economic activity declined as measured by an index based on seasonally adjusted employment growth and average wages.
But David G. Garraty, a professor of economics and management at Virginia Wesleyan College who compiles the index, said it's not time to panic. He expects a rebound in the midsummer from a strong tourist season.
In June, the index stood 1.3 percent above its year-earlier level.
The final phase of the employment section of the Americans with Disabilities Act took effect last week. Businesses with 15 or more employees are required to comply with the ADA's Title I, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities when hiring or promoting workers or distributing benefits.
Businesses that employ 25 or more workers have been covered since July 1992.
More than 400,000 private businesses that employ 15 to 24 workers will now be covered by the law's employment section, said a spokesman with the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.
Virginia Power asked state regulators to block its parent company from ousting three directors from the electric utility's board and changing its bylaws.
By firing the directors and revising Virginia Power's bylaws, Dominion Resources Inc. violated a 1986 order that assured a measure of independence to the utility's board, Virginia Power said in its filing with the State Corporation Commission.
It also asked for an emergency hearing.
Virginia Power's motion for an injunction against Dominion Resources is the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter struggle between the utility and its parent. by CNB