Southeast Indiana update.

• Author: Mogollon, David
• Position: Regional Report: Southeast

Consumer confidence may have given business a sharp uppercut in 1991, but most of the major employers in Southeast Indiana continued to fight back--some with surprising success.

Coming back from a definite knockout, for example, was U.S. Shoes in Osgood. The shoe-manufacturing plant, which employed about 300 people, closed in April after more than a year of soft sales sustained by its Cincinnati-based parent company. Displaced workers began writing resumes and finding other jobs. Plant Manager Jack Liles started selling off equipment and by July, had the plant almost empty when he got a call from the Cincinnati office. Liles was told business had picked up and was asked whether he could handle an order to make boots. That led to additional orders. Since then, U.S. Shoes has reinvested more than $2 million in new equipment at the Osgood plant.

"We're back up to about two-thirds of our complement," Liles says. "I've got two additional injection molding machines coming in which will require about 60 people. So by mid-spring, we'll be back to about 250 workers. I would hope by the end of '92 we'll be close to the 300 mark again." Prompting re-expansion is the new Easy Spirit comfort dress shoe, which is advertised on television by Tulane University's women's basketball team.

According to Liles, the plant shortly will be making a men's version of the same shoe, which will be promoted on television by Wilt Chamberlain. "For Osgood, it's really been a lifesaver," he says. "Without this we'd really be lost. However, we've got a good product, and it looks good for '92 and '93. We're still besieged with imports, but we can offer quick turnaround and quick delivery. Retailers don't have to carry the inventories they have to with foreign suppliers," Liles notes. And tighter inventories are a good thing in tough economic times.

Still, the recession has taken its toll.

Every county in the region except Decatur County ranked in the state's highest third in unemployment, according to figures released in December. Hardest-hit was Fayette County, which had the state's second-highest jobless rate in October, and the highest for four of the nine previous months.

FAYETTE COUNTY

Fayette County's largest employer, Ford Electronics & Refrigeration Corp. in Connersville, took a right cross from the national slump in automobile sales. It had its 3,500-person work force on four-day workweeks for much of the year to keep as many people earning a paycheck as possible.

In December, however, company officials announced that about 100 people would receive layoff notices because plant slowdowns at Ford Motor Co. had reduced orders. That was expected to push the number of workers awaiting call-backs to about 200.

The bright spot for the year was early settlement of contract negotiations with the hourly workers' union. Ford Motor Co. spokesman John Emmert in Detroit says the renewal, which wasn't scheduled until this spring, is expected to enhance the plant's position for supplier contracts for the next two years.

In 1991, retooling was the theme at Frigidaire--formerly White Consolidated Industries Dishwasher Division and Fayette County's second-largest employer until 1990, when more than half its 1,200-person staff was cut. On the brink of...