Morale of Carbide Workers Sags : Firm’s Problems Send Many Scurrying for New Jobs

A cavernous watering hole called Rosy Tomorrow’s has long been a favorite gathering place for the crowd from Union Carbide, and in the old days they brought a noisy bonhomie on their jaunts from the chemical giant’s nearby headquarters.

These days, the engineers, chemists and managers are more subdued. Although Carbide last week repelled a hostile takeover bid by GAF, many employees are mulling a traumatic year and wondering just how rosy Carbide’s tomorrows will be.

The company, after all, still faces billions of dollars in claims from lawsuits brought in connection with the December, 1984, gas leak at its plant in Bhopal, India. Its image problems were compounded by gas leaks last August at Institute and South Charleston, W.Va., and Carbide repelled GAF’s monthlong attack only by taking on huge debts and laying plans to sell off its valued consumer products division.

Some on Wall Street expect GAF to make yet another run at Carbide when its stock price falls enough to make such an acquisition less expensive.

At headquarters up the hill, “the board members may be opening champagne because of their victory, but not many down here are celebrating,” one young marketing official said. “The personal disruption has already been incredible, and who knows what will happen next.”

This middle manager, who asked to remain unidentified, said he hopes he won’t be around to find out. Recruited five years ago from a New England polytechnic college for what he considered a “dazzling” salary of $38,000, he bought a $120,000 house and planned to make western Connecticut his permanent home.

“This company used to be a little bit on the paternalistic side,” he said, “and with my wife’s family living in (nearby) Waterbury, we expected to be here a long time.”

But his faith in the company began to erode last Aug. 29, when the company announced a restructuring that called for plant closings and the loss of about 4,000 jobs. The steps taken to fight off GAF “really made me feel that this company’s going to be limping, and that won’t help my future,” he said.

So far, his job search has been unsuccessful, he said--in part because he is competing with others who are trying to leave the firm.

Executive recruitment agencies say they have received a growing flow of resumes from Carbide’s management and professional staff, particularly in the last month.

“There has been a tremendous influx of resumes in recent weeks,” said Bill Battalia, head of a New York executive recruitment agency that specializes in chemical industry employment. “And that’s pretty surprising from a company that historically has been able to hold on to people.”

Some employees accuse the company of mishandling some parts of its reorganization and the takeover defense. Carbide has announced the sale of its specialty polymer and composites unit to Amoco, “and a lot of people are still waiting to find out whether they’ll still work here, whether they’ll be moved to Amoco’s Chicago operations or whether they’ll lose their jobs,” said the manager. “It’s a painful limbo.”

During GAF’s attempted takeover, employees posted daily newspaper accounts of the battle on bulletin boards, and the esoteric terminology of the mergers and acquisition world became commonplace conversation in the company cafeteria. Almost weekly, the company showed videotaped speeches by Chairman Warren M. Anderson that sought to reassure employees and explain the current situation.

Not all listeners were sympathetic to the company’s chief executive. “Some of us really wanted (GAF Chairman Samuel) Heyman to succeed,” said another mid-level executive who will soon leave the company. “Here was this virile businessman who’d saved GAF from all its problems. We were so disgusted with our top managers we really wanted somebody to come in and clean up the mess.”

At the same time, some employees feel the company has been treated unfairly by Wall Street analysts and the press. Chemical leaks are an industrywide problem, they say; some can’t understand, either, that a rock of stability like Carbide could come so close to falling under the attack of a corporate raider.

“It seems like the day is gone when businessmen worry first about making a product,” said Vernon Jensen, a Carbide worker who is also president of Local 8-891 of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union in Bound Brook, N.J.