St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 45

ST LOUIS POST-DISPATCH BUSINESS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1994 9D PHILIP DINE ON LABOR Mawlings Sporting Goods Is For Sale Rawlings' Missouri Facilities HEADQUARTERS: Fenton. Fenton Headquarters MISSOURI Former Counsel For NLRB Keeps Eye On Clinton As President Bill Clinton attempts during the remaining three years of his first term to improve the nation's economy his campaign priority one key will be building a more harmonious industrial relations system. Reducing the acrimony between labor and management, preventing conflicts from spiraling into strikes, limiting the duration of work stop Springfield 1 Distribution Center PRODUCTS: Baseballs, gloves, bats, footballs, basketballs, uniforms and other athletic equipment and apparel. MANUFACTURING PLANTS: Licking and Ava, Tullahoma, Dolgeville, N.Y., and Costa Rica. HISTORY: The Rawlings brothers, George and Alfred, established the company in St.

Louis in 1887. FACTS: Rawlings is the official supplier of major league baseballs. The company introduced the first standardized baseball glove, the Bill Doak model, in 1919. More than half of all major league baseball players use its gloves. Roughly one-fourth of all major leaguers use its helmets.

All major league stadiums use its bases. Ava 1 Equipment Plant in By Christopher Carey Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Like sportscasters across America, Figgie International Inc. might soon be saying "Goodbye, Mr. Rawlings." Figgie, owner of Fenton-based Rawlings Sporting Goods, said Thursday it had hired an investment banking company to find buyers for all or part of the business. "Basically, Rawlings does not fit into our grand scheme of things," said Ira Gamm, a spokesman.

Rawlings is the official supplier of baseballs to the major leagues, hence the company-specific catch phrase sportscasters use when calling home runs in live broadcasts or replaying them on televised highlights. Figgie, a diversified Fortune 500 company in suburban Cleveland, has owned Rawlings since 1968. Most of Figgie's other units are in heavier manufacturing fields, such as sprinkler systems, fire-fighting equipment, bottling and sealing machines and defense electronics. Besides baseballs, Rawlings produces gloves, basketballs, footballs, uniforms and other athletic equipment and apparel. Figgie hired Dillon, Read a New York-based investment banking firm, to find buyers for Rawlings.

It hopes to complete the divestiture within six months, Gamm said. Figgie said it was impossible to predict how the sale of all or part of Rawlings would affect that company's headquarters and employees. Company officials were unable to say Thursday how many people worked at the headquarters and three other Missouri operations factories in Ava and Licking and a distribution center in Springfield. It had nearly 900 employees in Missouri in 1987, the 100th anniversary of its founding by brothers George and Alfred Rawlings. Because of its strong position in many markets, Rawlings should attract plenty of suitors, said Larry Weindruch, spokesman for the National Sporting Goods Association.

"They're one of the leaders, wherever they choose to compete," he said. Rawlings signed a 10-year con- Licking 2 Clothing Plants pages, boosting worker participation and their stake in corporate decision Post-Dispatch Map Source: Rawlings making all these will affect how productive workers are, how compet itive companies are and, ultimately, how well the economy does. Clinton has signaled his interest in labor-management issues by such mi tract with major league baseball in 1985 that calls for the company to supply the leagues with more than 500,000 balls annually. More than half of all major league players use its gloves, and a quarter use its helmets. Rawlings also has a strong presence in the institutional market, Weindruch said.

"They're big in the traditional team sports," he said. "They haven't gone into some of the trendy, new things, like in-line roller skates." Rawlings stopped making one product, football helmets, in 1988 because of concern about rising liability awards and insurance costs. Figgie does not release the sporting goods company's sales and profits. Instead, it lumps them together with the results for the other companies in its consumer products division. Figgie's consumer businesses, which sell everything from tennis clothing and hockey sticks to vacuum cleaners and fire alarms, had sales of $225 million and operating profits of $29 million in 1992.

Rawlings contributed to those profits, and also made money last year, Gamm said. cro-actions as involving him self in the brief but disruptive strike at Ameri can Airlines, and by broader initiatives such as the panel La bor Secretary Robert Reich set up to look at improving the nation industrial relations system. As he ventures into this complex and delicate field, Clinton will be closely observed from St. Louis. "Since I was an appointee of President Bush, I plan on being a member of the loyal opposition for the next Ralston Cuts Unit's Dividend Continental's Cash Condition Cited three years.

I do plan on commenting on these issues, because I think the other side needs to be heard, particularly when it comes to the debate over changing the nation's labor laws." The words spoken slowly in a soft Southern accent are those of Jerry Hunter, who from 1989 through November was general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Hunter shares several traits with the president: He's a native Arkansan, a veteran civil- 4 AO 4 By Jerri Stroud Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Ralston Purina Co. eliminated the 8-cent dividend on Continental Baking Group shares Thursday, leaving shareholders with a sour taste that the company's 100th anniversary cake couldn't offset. Ralston announced results from Continental and its other businesses at Thursday's shareholder meeting at America's Center downtown. Several thousand shareholders, employees and guests came to the meeting and an anniversary party afterward.

In addition to omitting the Continental dividend, the company failed to increase the 30-cent quarterly dividend for its Ralston Purina Group stock, which represents the company's main businesses. Shareholders have come to expect regular increases in the dividend at the yearly shareholder meeting. Speeches at Thursday's meeting stressed the company's efforts to turn around its human and pet food businesses in a "difficult and dynamic operating environment." Jerry Hunter 4 The combination of the Continental omission and the lack of an increase on Ralston Purina Group stock means that shareholders' income from the two kinds of Ralston shares is going down 5 percent. Ralston issued a special class of stock representing a 45 percent interest in Continental Baking Co. in July.

Ralston shareholders Robert C. Holt Jr.Post-Dispatch Vicky Lee, dog trainer for Ralston Purina at Purina Farms, poses with some of her charges after Ralston's annual meeting. Lee is holding Fancy, a 112-year-old poodle; to the right are Zest, a year-old golden retriever, and Chelsea, an 8-year-old German shepherd. The dogs are wearing scarves with the company's checkerboard logo. Stiritz got one share of Continental stock for every five shares of Ralston stock they owned.

One shareholder asked Chief Executive Wil liam P. Stiritz if he was going to take a pay cut commensurate with the dividend cut. The company paid Stiritz $1.39 million last year. The shareholder said Ralston's results seem to be going "from bad to worse." tive outlined during the meeting. Shareholder Janie Lee asked why Ralston keeps three corporate jets worth $60 million.

Lee termed the jets "dead weight" and asked, "Who flies them, where to and what for?" Stiritz said he would look into Lee's suggestion that executives use commercial flights. Another shareholder questioned the value of the 30 percent discount coupons Ralston sends shareholders for use at its Keystone ski resort in Colorado. The shareholder said most people See RALSTON, Page 16 off its cereal and ski resort businesses next month. The loss of cash flow "will reduce our ability to pay dividend increases in the near term," he said. Stiritz called declining results at Continental "a deep, complex problem" that can't be traced to organizational troubles alone.

The company is facing a shift in consumer preferences toward low-margin, unbranded products from premium baked goods, Continental's specialty. But Stiritz said he believes Continental is "on the right track" with a major cost-cutting initia Annual-meeting season is the time when corporations must tell shareholders how much top executives earn. You can dial PostFax at (31 4) 865-8585 to get execu- tive-pay summaries for these companies: Ralston Purina, document number 1144; Petrolite 1141; Laclede Gas, 1142; and Emerson Electric, 1143. Stiritz said the company decided to drop the Continental dividend after the company lost a penny a share in the first quarter. Stiritz said the company's cash flow will fall when it spins rights advocate, a lawyer, a baby boomer, a political moderate.

Unlike Clinton, he's a Republican. Hunter leaves Washington with a couple of notations in the nation's industrial relations history: He earned a widespread reputation for fairness after a decade of what labor viewed as big-business favoritism by other GOP appointees, and he was the first black to head the NLRB. Having completed his term and not being reappointed by Clinton, Hunter is moving back to St. Louis to be a partner in the law firm of Bryan Cave. In the late 1980s he ran the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations under Gov.

John Ashcroft. Hunter undertakes his Clinton watch with concern about funding cuts in the NLRB and vacancies on the labor board, including chairman. He blames Clinton for the difficulty getting nominees approved by Congress. "I think the problem is that there's a great deal of concern that with the people the president has nominated so far, the board would no longer be an impartial arbiter of labor disputes, and would try to change long-standing board precedents to shift the balance to labor." Rather than labor law reform, a key union goal, adequate resources are needed so the NLRB and other agencies can do their job, Hunter said. Lower staffing causes delays in handling cases in the regional offices, including in St.

Louis, he warned. Organized labor's growing confidence given its role in Clinton's election will make unions more assertive, Hunter predicts. "I think organized labor thinks it will be able to affect not only appointments under Clinton, but also will influence many of Clinton's policies, including striker replacement and OSHA reform, and that he will change the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act and make it easier to organize employees," Hunter said. Hunter foresees "a very interesting year in labor relations." If Clinton gets "personally involved which he has not so far" he may swing key senators to the striker-replacement bill of Rep. William Clay, D-St.

Louis, including the two uncommitted ones from Arkansas. That would provide "organized labor a great deal of initiative on their other legislation so 1994 may determine whether there will be a great deal of change in labor statutes or whether we will stay with the status quo," Hunter said. He thinks Clinton will be active on labor's behalf, after the NAFTA fallout: "I don't think anyone should take it lightly that (AFL-CIO President) Lane Kirkland was sitting next to the first lady at the State of the Union address." Weather Belts Stores' Sales Channel 2 Trims Staff, Shuffles Weekend Lineup Snow And Quake Hurt Revenue By Babette Morgan Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Fierce weather knocked the wind out of retailers' sales in seven stores temporarily closed because of the earthquake in Los Angeles. 1 Same-store sales by 4.2 percent in January at Venture Stores a discounter based in O'Fallon, Mo. Overall sales were up 6.3 percent compared to January 1993.

The discounter operates 104 discount stores in nine states. 1 Another St. Louis-based retailer, Edison Brothers Stores reported a 4.3 percent decline in overall sales in January. Edison, a See SALES, Page 15 stations will not be filled, Marbut said, and other jobs and responsibilities are being streamlined and consolidated to improve efficiency. KTVI's job cuts hit a number of departments, including programming, engineering, traffic, special projects and photography, Shister said.

The station also moved to prop up weak weekend news ratings by overhauling its lineup of on-air talent. Bill Davis, a sports reporter and anchor, will take over Gizinski's weekend anchor spot. Marion Brooks, a general assignment reporter at KTVI since January 1993, will move up to become weekend anchor, succeeding Betsey Bruce. Bruce has been reassigned as a general assignment and education reporter, Shister said. Channel 2's 10 p.m.

newscasts rank third in the St. Louis market, behind Channel 5 and Channel 4, according to recent Nielsen surveys. But its weeknight share of the audience is much stronger than its weekend viewership, the ratings show. New ratings system to be tested 15 By Babette Morgan and Jerry Berger Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Channel 2 in St. Louis is cutting its staff and revamping its weekend news team to improve its third-place ratings.

The staff of KTVI-TV will be cut by 16 people, including Greg Gizinski, a sports reporter and weekend sports anchor, and Joe Petrovich, weekend meteorologist, according to spokeswoman Diane Shister. The station employed 169 people before the cutbacks, Shister said. The owner of the station, Argyle Television Holding Inc. of San Antonio, Texas, announced the changes Thursday, along with other cuts at its stations in Dallas and Birmingham, Ala. All three are part of Argyle's recent purchase of four TV stations from Times Mirror Co.

The fourth station is in Austin, Texas. Bob Marbut, chief executive of Argyle, said in a statement: "We are positioning our TV stations to be more responsive to viewer and advertiser needs and to be more competitive in the coming era of the information-entertainment superhighway." Many positions currently vacant at the January, further slowing business in a typically slow month. Sales reports from the nation's biggest retailers, released Thursday, showed revenue sapped by the snow and cold and zapped by the earthquake in Southern California. The elements had a "really severe impact on sales," said Philip Abbenhaus, a retailing analyst for Stifel, Nicolaus Co. in St.

Louis. "Merchants could only scratch their heads and say, 'What do you The good news is that January is the smallest month of the year for retail revenue, he said. Among those chains hit hard were Los Angeles-based Carter Hawley Hale Stores which closed 14 stores temporarily because of the earthquake. Four of those department stores remain closed. U.S.

Shoe Corp. of Cincinnati, cited the weather and quake as factors in an 8.3 percent slump in its same-store sales for the month. Same-store sales, revenue from stores open at least a year, are considered a key gauge of a retailer's performance because they exclude the results of new stores, where sales tend to be unusually high, and acquisitions. In St. Louis, May Department Stores the nation's largest operator of department stores, showed a 5 percent increase in same-store sales and an 8.5 percent jump in overall ales.

May says its results exclude the sales of YOUR MONEY On The Scent Of Cash Analyst Laszlo Birinyi watches where the money goes, then develops an investment portfolio 13 MARKET INDEX American Exchange 14 Bonds 15 Futures 15 Money, Rates 13 Mutual Funds 12 NASDAQ 14 New York Stocks 10 St. Louis Markets 15 Treasuries 15.