The Journal Times from Racine, Wisconsin • 25

-Li -I i -i jjniin.li i ir-n I i I i I 1 Bitfe breathed Sirito old 1 (SB locomotive possible. A new $6 million training center with carpeting and art stands in jarring, pointy-roofed contrast to the old red brick factory buildings around it. THE COMPANY agreed to a 1983 job package, for instance, which provides pay protection for employees whose jobs are directly eliminated by robots or other automated machines. They are guaranteed their old pay rate for 26 weeks if they are moved to a lower-rated job. The United Electrical Workers union, which represents most of the blue-collar workforce at the Erie plant, concedes that its members are better off -under present circumstances than if the plant had shut down or moved south.

However, the union activists here, like their counterparts elsewhere, express deep government's Monthly Labor Review says. "Manufacturing, which represented 25 percent of all jobs in 1959 but less than 19 percent in 1982, is projected to maintain this steady share throughout the 1982-1995 period." The message here by the lake is that, painful as automation can be, it beats the alternatives. Preventing job loss due to automation is about as likely as a general waging a major battle without casualties, GE's high-tech evangelist. Executive Vice President James A. Baker said.

But be added, "If automation is an occasional sniper, eliminating a job here and there, business failure (due to superior foreign competition) is a neutron bomb that can empty a factory in one day." HE SAYS his company will "continue to dance with the girls that brung us the grunty cities" of the Northeast such as Erie, Cleveland and Schenectady. It is not possible to trace the changing nature of the work Very precisely, partly because the "revolution" is not really happening as fast and as clearly as the public thinks, said Erie plant spokesman Joseph E. Podolsky. But Carl J. Schlemmer, general manager of the transportation systems division, has said the mix generally will shift more and more toward technicians and trained specialists such as people to maintain and repair the new technology as the number of manual workers continues to decline.

GE has taken great pains, officials say, to minimize adverse reactions from union leaders and to ease the impact of the transition on workers here as much as like retired relatives. Managers here say pointedly that they intend to avoid the fate of Big Steel. Much attention has focused on the individual suffering caused by wrenching changes in the national economy and in the nature of the work Americans do. BUT THE ERIE PLANT, caught in dramatic transition, offers a glimpse of a companion reality: economic survivors adjusting. Butch Glass, a bearded man in a watch cap, earplugs and jeans started out as a welder here more than 13 years ago and now he tends a computer-driven machine that lifts two-ton plates of steel up to six inches thick.

It then lowers them into a cooling bath he calls it the "waterbed" and, using a high-speed plasma-arc burning system, cuts them into the desired shapes. The company that made the new equipment came in and trained him to run it. The steel used to get so hot that "I had to wear gloves. It burnt the soles of my feet. In summer you lost a lot of weight in here." Now, with the new equipment, he said with a grin, "It's making a lazy man out of me.

I just sit in that chair and watch it burn." AS THE COUNTRY rises out of the recession, some analysts caution against putting too much stock in the recent spate of doomful predictions of the demise of American industry or of the obliteration of much of the job market What is happening is part of a continual evolution in both, they say. "Contrary to several popular reports, the decade of the 1990s will not see the demise of America's smokestack industries," the latest issue of the By Kthy Swyr Washington Post ERIE, Pa. Foreman John Stewart, behind glass in his elevated booth, watched the new machines down on the vast floor of Building Two pass a locomotive motor frame up the assembly line, fussing over it like midwives. The sight seems to bode ill for human workers, reinforcing dire predictions about the "specter of technological unemployment." However, managers here at General Electric 4 70-year-old refurbished locomotive plant on the edge of Lake Erie are promoting a more positive view: they estimate that as a result of automation, their output will increase by one-third and the number of people they employ will go up by 10 percent compared to what it would have been without the new machines. SAID STEWART, who started work here 20 years ago as a machinist with a high school education, "The hardest part of the change is that employees accustomed to running a single stand-alone machine now have to do everything from sweeping up the floor and cleaning up chips to running computers.

These people are used to telling the machines what to do, and now the machines are telling them." In more than one way, the plant has the appeal of a model that goes against stereotype. Here, instead of fleeing to the Sunbelt, GE has invested a quarter of a billion dollars to modernize an old factory in the midst of decaying Smokestack America. The old machines Mill stand around the edges of the plant in some spots, foreboding about the new technology. i ADAM FIORAVANTI, head of the union's Erie local, argues that automation should carry with it a reduced work week, earlier retirement and more paid time off for employees. "We believe the workers should be the beneficiaries of automation, not the victims." Organized workers here fear a loss of power for the union as "the skills of the machinists migrate into the computer-programming office" and as the plant workers "become appendages of machines." "If we bargain for the people who sweep up around the machines," said Fioravanti, "we don't, have the same power as if we make the product." The union doesn't want to stop progress, he said.

"We're just trying to get some damn ground rules." jj PI) CQ) Stocks, page 2 House plan, page 5 Classified, page 7 the Journal Times Sunday, Jan. 8, 1984 JotasooTi's fiab Oowmitowini so fair: $780,000 By David Pfankuchan Journal Times The recent real estate purchases by C. Johnson Son Inc. in the 200 block of Main St. and around the comer at 215 State St.

the empty six-story Shoop building have cost the Racine maker of waxes, polishes, insecticides and other products a total of $780,000, according to the public record. The most recent purchases, six old buildings from 216 through 230 Main that's the west side of the street account for 1462,500 of. that. Luilding by building, here's what those structures sold for, according to records how on file with the register of deeds: 216 Main the building at the corner of State and Main streets occupied by Sylvia's Snack Shop, fetched $135,000. It was built in 1882.

Johnson bought it from Sylvia An-zalone. 218 Main an idle building, went for $41,700. The seller was Donna M. Baum. 220 Main also idle, brought $73,100.

Sellers were Jeanette Ryder and Dorothy R. Porter. 224 Main St an idle building that once house Supply a 1 sporting goods store now at 430 Main, went for $80,800. Sellers were Thomas Dremel and Theodore Dremel. 228 Main the building housing Decorators Supply House, a store operated by Joseph Hegeman, brought $80,000.

Sellers were Joseph and Mary Hegeman. 230 Main another idle building that once had a store in it called Wind Sail, sold for $51,900. Seller was Wind Sail Inc. Records on file with Wisconsin's secretary of state list Theodore Dremel as the corporation's registered agent. Johnson bought the the idle 126-year-old, four story former Hotel Nelson at 245 Main St.

and the adjacent, empty former Wisconsin Electric Power Co. Public Service Building at 239 Main St. in October for $145,000, as previously reported. That purchase was followed in December by acquisition of the Shoop building, for $172,500 as previously reported, and the six buildings on the west side of Main. All of the acquisitions were made by Johnson through a subsidiary called Johnson Redevelopment Corp.

The subsidiary was created to redevelop Downtown real estate. In November, the city council approved a request by the subsidiary for $6.2 million in industrial revenue bonding to support the project, which calls for remodeling the Shoop building for use as an office structure, and converting the old hotel and public service building to a single twin-tower office complex. No office tenants have been announced. Some of the six buildings acquired on the west side of Main they are east and southeast of the Suoop building, which has a metered parking lot behind it may be torn down for parking, Johnson spokesman have said. Last month, Johnson formed two limited partnerships to own the office buildings.

One, called Shoop Limited Partnership, owns the Shoop building and the six buildings acquired on the west side of Main. The other, Hit; nri 1 i -Fr 1 jo I Journal Times photo by Charles S. Vallone These 6 buildings on the west side of Main Street sold for $462,500 Main Place Limited Partnership, Johnson spokesman James May said, to provide maximum flexibil- owns the old hotel arid the former said Johnson Redevelopment "plans ity, enabling the company to bring public service building. to own no more than 50 percent" of in joint-venture development part- The general, or managing part-. either project, "at least through the ners, limited partners as investors, ner, in each partnership is Johnson development stage." or to sell the projects "to an end Redevelopment Corp.

The partnerships were formed, he user." In the event of a lawsuit, a limited partner is liable only for the amount of his investment. A general partner has unlimited liability. Limited partnerships are frequently used as tax shelters Bucinsss bits tmelf )' Ptankuehn to Clark said. Euclid's main plants are at Euclid, Ohio, and Guelph. Ont.

Clark said Euclid will complement ark's line of front-end loaders. Susan Dembowski has joined the Journal Times, 212 4th as human resources manager. Dembowski, 29, who has a bachelor's degree in business administration from 'Marquette University, previously was employee relations manager at TSR Hobbies Lake Geneva. Earlier, she was with Bab-cock Wilcox in Milwaukee. At the Journal Times, Dembowski replaces Rachel Bradbury, whose title was personnel manager.

Bradbury left the Journal Times to become director of human resources for the Billings Gazette, Billings. Mont. Both daily newspapers are owned by Lee Enterprises Inc. ABC, under its original agreement with Getty, has a further option to buy as much as 49 percent of ESPN by Oct. 1.

ESPN has posted losses of $70 million to $80 million since its inception in 1979, but Getty and ESPN executives-have said they expect it to break even in this year's fourth quarter. Clark Equipment Buchanan, said Thursday that its construction machinery unit bought Euclid a subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG of West Germany, in a stock and cash transaction valued at $34 million to $39 million. Euclid, which makes heavy construction trucks, was purchased by Clark Michigan Co. to build a stronger company that might later form a joint venture with other major construction machinery makers, American Broadcasting Cos. has agreed to acquire 15 percent of the Entertainment Sports Program Network, one of the largest cable program services, from Getty Oil Co.

in a transaction valued at about $30 million. Sources within ABC and ESPN said ABC exercised an option it has held for about two years to buy part of Getty 's 85 percent interest in the cable program concern, the Wall Street Journal reported. Families sell to Chapman chief Wall St. week 1290- 1270- 2 Verne Read, a member of the founding family and company chairman since 1969, plans to retire, Jolton said. The firm has stores at Brookfield.

Bayshore, Northridge, Mayfair and Grand Avenue shopping centers and in Madison. Chapman founded the company in 1857 with a dry good store in downtown Milwaukee. Jolton said he planned no changes in the company's current per day. On the other hand. General Motors Ford Motor and Chrysler have added workers to handle production of their larger, more expensive models.

The domestic car industry has picked up sales partly because of restraints agreement" that -has restricted Japanese access to the U.S. car market since April 1981. "The real question" for U.S. car manufacturers "is how well they will do after those -restraints are lifted in April 1984," said analyst James E. Harbour of Harbour Associates, based in Berkely.

Mich. "FORD HAS FINALLY got product quality that very competitive. GM has some new cars coming out-, and they look pretty good. Chrysler has a new van that's going to be a gold mine," Harbour said He said that the combination of improved domestic quality and restrictions on Japanese imports means, "All domestics should improve their market share this year "But the question is: 'Has domestic car quality improved enough to hold on to market share once the restrictions are taken off the Japanese cars0' Domestic automakers say, "Yes." But only GM among them is willing to forego import restrictions. And GM's reasons for dumping the restraints, its critics say, are less than noble.

GM wants to import small, -high-quality Japanese cars and sell them in the United States under GM nameplates. Other analysts predict that Chrysler, with its new line of minivans, will help to fill the perceived quality gap between U.S. and Japanese makes in 1984 MINIVANS ARE VAN-LIKE haulers of people and cargo, designed to fit into a garage and into other spaces where regular vans won go. The minivans also are supposed to use less fuel than standard-size station wagons, which many industry analysts and officials expect minivans to replace Toyota Motor Corp. was first to market its mid-engme, rear-wheel-drive minivan in the United States But Toyota is expected to sell only 24.000 to 36.000 minivans in this country this year, largely because of import restrictions, according to Power Associates The Chrysler minivans the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager, the first minivans from a U.S.

maker are expected to be the high-volume leader in the U.S. minivan market in 1984, a report by one analyst said. The low-profile, front-wheel-drive Chrysler minivans have a contemporary design that "is already a step ahead of the Toyota van," according to the report By Warren- Brown Washington Post WASHINGTON U.S. automakers say they will sell 14.1 million cars and trucks in 1984 mostly to middle-and upper-income buyers. That gain would mark a 15 percent increase over the estimated 12.3 million vehicles the domestic industry sold in 1983 the best selling year since 1979, when U.S.

manufacturers sold 11.5 million cars and trucks. BUT AUTO INDUSTRY officials and analysts are not overjoyed about this year's prospects. They say there are too many variables including upcoming labor negotiations and the exodus of lower-income buyers from the new -car market that could cause trouble. "All of the historical conditions are there for strong sales in 1984," said Martin L. Anderson, director of the Future of the Automobile Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Interest rates are stable. Consumer confidence is up. But on a seasonally adjusted basis, new-car sales have been kind of flat since July, largely because a lot of traditional new-car buyers have been staying out of the market," Anderson said Those recalcitrant "traditional buyers" tend to be lower-income people, about 2 million of whom might buy used cars or no car at all in 1984 because of the relatively steep prices of new vehicles, according to Anderson. THIS YEAR, new cars will sell for an average price of $10,500, estimates industry analyst Arvid Jouppi. That isn't a dramatic increase from the 1982 figure of $9,663, but it is big enough to intimidate many lower-income buyers.

Most of the 1984-model offering is aimed at the top of the U.S. car market, a position occupied by the middle income and the wealthy. Lower-income people, as a result, "have been left out," Anderson said The inherent danger in that omission is that automakers may be building future sales on too narrow a base, according to Anderson and others. But domestic automakers say it is difficult for them to pull enough economy-minded buyers into the new-car market at a profitable price. American Motors with its bread-and-butter small-car lineup, is an example.

AMC HAS DONE a reasonably good job of moving its Renault Encores, base price, and its Renault Alliances, base price, $5,959 But sales of those models have not been good enough to stop the company from cutting its early 1984 small-car production by 100 units MILWAUKEE (AP) The president of the T.A. Chapman which has clothing stores in metropolitan Milwaukee and Madison, has purchased controlling interest in the 127-year-old firm from members of the founding families. Stan Jolton said members of the Chester and Read families, descendants of company founder Timothy Appleton Chapman, will no longer take an active part in the firm's daily activities, but would retain a minority interest. 1300 125a 1200, Eastern Airlines changes slogan 115a 1100- 105O 1000- and Eastern with 36.79 million All three carriers' passenger loads grew, but United's grew faster because of a major expansion program. "This means that (Eastern Chairman Frank) Borman should stop advertising that they're America's favorite airline," United spokesman Chuck Novak said.

Apparently, Eastern agrees. It plans to drop that slogan and stick entirely with its "We earn our wings every day" pitch, spokeswoman Paula Musto said By Bill Sing Lot Angeles Times MIAMI Eastern Airlines no longer is "America's favorite way to fly." The Miami-based carrier had based that much-used advertising slogan on statistics that showed that it 'carried more passengers than any other U.S. airline in recent years. However, new statistics for 1983 show both United and Delta airlines surpassed Eastern. United carried 38.19 million passengers in 1983, compared to Delta at 36.80 million 1933 84 Market Analysis of Dow Jones Industrials for week of Jan.

2-6: high 1286 64 low 1252.74 fclos 1288.64 change 28 00.