St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 42

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH BUSINESS 10D FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1994 New Webster Dean Not All Business Consumer Price Index Percent change from prior month, seasonally adjusted 0.5 Inflation Tamed For A Month 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 Dusiness needs people not just with knowledge, but with skills people who speak on their feet and write cogently, ff JOHN E. DITTRICH, newly named dean of Webster University's School of Business and Management AM A 0 1993 4 4 '-f LJ Jan, '93 Dec. '93 Jan. "94 "qq1 Dittrich Is 'Humanistic' By Robert Manor Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Webster University has a new dean on the way for its School of Business and Management, and he plans to continue Webster's tradition of teaching business with a human face.

Business "needs people not just with knowledge, but with skills people who can speak on their feet and write cogently," said dean John E. Dittrich. The university will announce today that Dittrich will assume his new job in May. Dittrich is now dean of the T. Boone Pickens College of Business at West Texas State University.

Webster's business and management programs have recently been reorganized and Dittrich's position is newly created. He holds a doctorate in administrative theory and organizational behavior from the University of Washington-Seattle, and an MBA from Harvard University. "My interest has been in the behavior of managers," Dittrich said. Dittrich said his philosophy of teaching business and management "is a more humanistic approach. It is not less interested in the bottom line." AP Source: U.S.

Dept. ofLtbor Compiled From News Services WASHINGTON Consumer prices did not go up at all in January, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first time the department's monthly cost-of-living index did not rise in more than four years. The Clinton administration said the Consumer Price Index was proving its contention that inflation remains well under control with no need for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates further. The central bank earlier this month raised short-term rates a quarter of a percent to 3.25 percent and has dropped broad hints that another credit tightening would happen soon, "Going into the new year, inflation remains tame," said Laura D'Andrea Tyson, head of the president's Coun- Dittrich notes that more than 4,000 the university's 10,600 students worldwide are taking business classes double the average for the nation's four-year schools.

Webster has "taken education to the customer," Dittrich said. Its urban campuses in Orlando, San Diego; San Antonio, Texas, and elsewhere are offering the education the buyer wants, and it is an education about business. Dittrich says the university will continue to hire chief executives, accountants and other execs to See DEAN, Page 15 Dittrich said that teaching students the basics of business and management is easy. The more difficult goal is to teach them to learn. "We will be able to prepare them for the first job," he said.

"That is not difficult to do." More important is to inspire a life-long interest in learning, he said, and "if they return to school three or four times in their lives, good." Webster has a reputation for tolerance, an affection for the liberal arts. Do Webster students really want to learn about debt-equity ratios and recapitalization strategies? cil of Economic Advisers. "We remain on a course of a strong economy and low inflation." Energy, food, clothing and airline ticket prices all declined. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the consumer price index rose 0.1 percent last month. The last time consumer prices showed no change was in August 1989.

The last decline was in 1986. PHILIP DINE ON LABOR 'Wj igprer Illinois Labor Battles Are Internationalized For a year or more, Southern Illinois has been one of the nation's labor battlegrounds. Acrimonious management-labor fights have been waged between Caterpillar and the United Auto Workers in Peoria, A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co. and the Allied Industrial Workers in Decatur, and Peabody Mining Co.

and the United Mine Workers throughout Southern Illinois. Now, Illinois' battles are becoming internationalized. In what it calls an act of solidarity across national borders, the giant International Metalworkers' Federation will hold a world conference of Caterpillar unions in Peoria in May. The IMF is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Peter 4 1 Unterweger, head of the IMF's automotive department, will run the two-day Peoria session.

"What I hope comes out of this meeting is a reinforced coordination and cooperation among these workers in the Caterpillar plants throughout the world," Unterweger said Thursday from his home in Geneva. "The real problem is that a Europeans Cry Foul In Jet Deal Allege GATT Violation Compiled From News Services PARIS The $6 billion U.S.-Saudi aircraft deal announced by President Bill Clinton Wednesday might be in violation of recently concluded world trade talks, European plane manufacturer Airbus Industrie said. If the United States allowed Saudi Arabia to reschedule payments on military equipment orders as an incentive to buy the planes, the deal would violate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Airbus spokesman Sean Lee said. Under the aircraft deal, Saudi Arabia will upgrade its flagship Saudia Airlines with 50 planes made by Boeing Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Airbus, a four-nation European consortium, had been vigorously wooing the Saudis. Washington sources said McDonnell's division in California, Douglas Aircraft could get about 40 percent of the Saudi order. Orders of both long-haul, three-engine MD-lls, and medium-range, twin-engine MD-8090 series airliners, are expected. The exact breakdown on the number, type and price of planes will be negotiated in late March in a meeting in Saudi Arabia. A spokesman for Airbus accused Clinton of "blatant political interference and leverage." Analysts said a recent agreement by the United States on restructuring $9.2 billion of Saudi defense spending was key to the commercial aircraft order.

But McDonnell Chairman John F. McDonnell has denied any tie, saying Saudia Airlines is a "completely separate operation." Strong lobbying by the Clinton administration helped the two U.S. companies beat Airbus in selling to the Saudis. The administration helped by arranging financing through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which means a break on interest rates from commercial banks.

Airbus, a consortium of firms from Britain, France, Germany and Spain, also noted that Clinton said he had telephoned King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in support of the U.S. deal. William Flannery of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed information for this story. rr I I I it i mum i ii AP company like Cat, like all the multinationals, can easily transfer capital and play workers off against each other. The workers, the unions, are very nationally rooted organizations and it's difficult to really create a strong international counterweight to the power of the company.

We hope to take a real step in that direction in Peoria." IMF members from England, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Brazil, South Africa, Italy and elsewhere are expected in Peoria. A native of Austria, Unterweger spent 16 years with the United Auto Workers in this country. The UAW is a member of the International Metalworkers' Federation, which is 101 years old and has 18 million members in 70 countries. "Workers throughout the world have tremendous problems with Caterpillar," Unterweger said. "When I came on the job two years ago, there already was a letter on my desk from workers in Belgium requesting we hold a major worldwide meeting." The meeting will be May 5-6, followed the next day by a major labor rally in Peoria.

The conference's purpose is two-fold, Unterweger said: To foster contacts among Caterpillar's workers and help them exchange information on their respective work situations. Caterpillar workers in Peoria have been embroiled in a dragged-out contract fight with the company for a couple of years. Elsewhere on the Illinois-global front, several officials of the United Paperworkers International Union traveled to the Staley shareholders meeting in London late last month, to raise the workers' concerns. They handed out fliers titled "Tory Assault in America's Heartland." When the Illinois Federation of Teachers gathers in St. Louis next month, officials will have to choose someone to fill the unfinished term of the union's president, Jacqueline B.

Vaughn. Some 550 delegates will attend the IFT's annual convention March 18-20 at the Adams Mark Hotel downtown. Vaughn, in her third term, died Jan. 22 in Chicago at age 58. She also was president of the Chicago Teachers Union, the first woman and first black to head that union.

A St. Louis native, she moved early in her child President Clinton announces the Saudi-Boeing-McDonnell Douglas deal Wednesday. With him are Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz, left, and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar. itcfa Channel 30 Is Planning To Start Own Newscast ftirs Fmy 1 station will spend $1 million to $2 million on equipment, then spend perhaps $1 million a year on operations. It will hire 20 to 30 people and put four or five camera crews on the street.

Bank's ATMs Unbalance Thousands Of Customers Gregg Filandrinos Football deal helps Competitors say that's a By Jim Gallagher Ol the Post-Dispatch Staff KDNL Channel 30 plans to start its own news program early next year, meaning St. Louis viewers will have five local TV news shows from which to choose. The Fox network affiliate says the half-hour show will air at 9 p.m. every night. That would put it head-to-head with independent station KPLR Channel 11 's hour-long newscast.

The timing would duck a direct collision with the higher-rated 10 p.m. shows on major network affiliates at channels 2, 4 and 5. Fox's new $1.6 billion contract to broadcast NFL football helped spark KDNL to start a newsroom from scratch, said Gregg Filandrinos, station general manager. Football will bring the station a hefty audience of men aged 25 to 54 and that crowd likes news, said Filandrinos. KDNL's regular viewers tend to be younger.

Newscasts typically bring in a third of a station's advertising money, he said, along with giant audiences. Viewership surveys show that 8 of 10 St. Louisans watching TV at 10 p.m. are watching news shows. Even though it is the fifth area TV news operation, KDNL's show should make a profit, Filandrinos said.

The hood to Chicago; by the time she was 5 years old both her parents had died and she was raised by a family friend. Despite a tough background, she graduated from Chicago reasonable work force for one show a day. But it pales in comparison with operations at major network afflicates KTVI, KMOV and KSDK, which do three or four daily newscasts plus special reports. KSDK, for instance, fields 16 camera crews. News directors at other stations say KDNL may have to pick a splashy format to draw viewers.

Newscasts at 10 p.m. compete mainly with themselves, but viewers are used to entertainment at 9 p.m., noted news director Bill Berra at KTVI, Channel 2. "They'll have to be a little bit different," he said. KDNL is No. 5 in viewership here.

Nielsen ratings show 10 percent of viewers watch KDNL in a typical hour, compared with KSDK's 26 percent, KMOV's 20 percent, KTVI's 14 percent, and KPLR's 11 percent. Teachers College in 1956, got a master's degree 10 years later and studied at Harvard University. Her union career began in 1957 when she was elected a Chicago Teachers Union delegate; in 1994, Reuters News Service NEW YORK Robot bank tellers went haywire in Manhattan Thursday, bouncing checks, decimating balances and vaporizing millions of dollars in the accounts of irate New Yorkers. Customers stormed into Chemical Bank's branch offices to complain of empty accounts and bounced checks after a computer glitch affected at least 70,000 of the bank's approximately 1 million customers. An internal memorandum circulated to Chemical branches throughout the New York area said the extent of the glitch was not yet known, but that all accounts would be restored to accuracy by early today.

The computer failure led to withdrawals made Wednesday being double-posted so that if a customer withdrew $100 from an account, it was posted as $200. A spokesman for the bank, Ken Herz, confirmed that at least 70,000 customers had been affected after Chemical's Automatic Teller Machines double-posted withdrawals and account transfers, but said the problem was fixed. "We will do what is right by customers. No checks will be bounced as a result of this." But several customers complained that checks had already been bounced as a result of the computer error. Larry Gold, a utilities employee, said he had just found out that the bank had "misplaced my money." "It's not a happy day, you might say," said Gold.

Although many customers did not know of the problem, thousands of others made angry phone calls to the bank's service centers. A Chemical employee said 300 operators had been explaining the glitch to customers. I Uj ittn)miiiiiMin Vaughn YOUR MONEY '4 1984 she became CTU president. Five years later, she was elected to head the statewide union. As a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers she represented American teachers from Zambia to South Africa to Rome to Sweden.

Illinois Superintendent of Education Robert Lein-inger said the state has lost a "steadfast advocate for kids." Chicago Federation of Labor President Robert Healey said that beyond salaries and working conditions Vaughn battled school boards all her life for more "dignity and respect" for teachers. MARKET INDEX American Exchange 14 Bonds 16 Futures 12 Money, Rates 12 Mutual Funds 13 NASDAQ 14 New York Stocks 11 Treasuries 12 Municipal bonds are 1 vulnerable to today's rising interest rates. PAGE 16.