news ~ > Fibers & Textiles Company Gastonia, North Carolina • Bennettsville, South Carolina Bowling Green, Kentucky • Hopewell, Virginia • Woodstock, Ontario, Canada WINDOW TO THE NORTH Freelon Ramsey, Shop millwright 2c, paused to look out the Nort;h window of the 5th floor Firestone-Gastonia mill tower. For about $ 10 or less... No matter how you heat your house, you can save 20 to 30 percent of the insulating costs the first winter alone. But what are some 'smaller' ways to save energy costs this winter? You can do a lot with an inexpensive caulking gun and a few tubes of caulking compound — sealing air leaks around doors, windows, outlet vents for clothes dryers, exhaust fans, etc. For about $10 or less, here are some other things that go far toward saving energy and making you more comfortable: Fit a cover over the outside of your air conditioner. Put a plastic cover over your kitchen, bathroom and attic exhaust fans. Place draft guards at bottom of doors and windows. Install draft blockers behind electrical switches and outlets. Or, fit rubber plugs into unused electrical outlets. Put aerators on faucets to cut wasteful flow of hot water. Use fluorescent lights that screw into standard sockets (more light with less energy, than with incandescent lights.) In sulate exposed heating ducts to keep hot air from cooling short of the place it’s needed. Insulate hot-water pipes for the same reason. Install inside storm windows. Attach reflected window film (cut heat loss up to 40 percent and screen out 75 percent summer sun.) ‘More on page 3 ’82 VEHICLES SIR REBATES Frances Fletcher, Bennettsville Sal Costanza, Bowling Green As a supplier company to American Eligible 1982-model vehicles and rebate Motors, Firestone has arranged for rebates to amounts: employees on their purchase of new 1982 Wagoneer $350.00 AMC, Jeep and eligible Renault vehicles. Cherokee $325.00 The Supplier Invoice Reduction Plan allows Jeep Truck $275.00 for each employee to buy up to 2 vehicles Eagle $250.00 per model year. CJ(Jeep) ! ’ $250’00 Employees, after working out an arrange- Scrambler (Jeep) $250.00 ment with a dealer (trade-in, method of pay- Concord $225.00 ment, etc.) and selected vehicle is delivered Eagle (kammback) (SC/4) $200.00 and licensed, present a copy of the title to the Renault 18i $ 150.00 SIR coordinator at each Firestone plant: Spirit $ 125.00 LeCar $ 75.00 Scholarship applications The first S.A.T. test (required of Firestone College Scholar ship applicants) was administered Nov. 7 in high schools across the country. Dec. 5 and Jan. 23 are the other dates in the test series. School counselors have complete information on the S.A.T. exam and schedule. Firestone Personnel offices have details on the company Scholarship program. All plants and other locations have the 1982 application packets. Jane Marie Wentz. 7th-grader at Southwest Junior High School, Gastonia, is in the habit of achiev ing good records in school and church. Chapel Grove, her last school before junior high, awarded her three certificates for Citizen of the Month, one for being a ‘Supereaderi a Certificate of Achievement, and a six-years perfect attendance cer tificate — two of those years for records at Clay Street Elementary School. At West Franklin Baptist Church The 1982 Firestone Scholarship program for eligible sons and daughters of company employees school. Jane recently received a Certificate of Achievement, and an llth-year bar on her long 'ladder' lapel medal for school attendance. Jane’s father, Robert (Bud) Wentz, is a technical assistant in Process and Product Development. Her grandfather, Raymond Varna- dore, is retired from Firestone. was announced in September. One major change in eligibility rules this year has to do with salary limit. We like it that way, too A while back, a U.S. government task force study on Work in America report listed eight major concerns of people on the job. From top down, they are: Interesting work. Enough help and equipment to get the job done. Enough information to get the job done. Enough authori ty to get the job done. Good pay. Opportunity to develop social abilities. Job security. Seeing the results of one’s work. More than a hundred studies over the past 30 years show much the same thing, the task force reported. The main con cern of people on the job is to become masters of their im mediate environment and to feel that their work and them selves are important. INSTEAD OF a fixed dollar ceiling on the amount of money a person may earn and still have a son or daughter eligible for the award, the policy now requires that a fulltime hourly employee or salary employee (grade 28 or below) must be on the company payroll at the time the award is made. Employees are required to have 5 or more years continuous compxiny service by Jan. 1, 1982, for their child to qualify. Each applicant must be a senior in a high school in the United States: must be in the top third of the class for the first 3‘/a years of high school. Firestone grants continue at $1,700 per year if the recipient at tends a college or university operated by local or state government; 83,400 per year if the school at tended is a private institution. Under the program, the company last spring awarded 28 Scholar ships and 56 Certificates of Merit throughout the country. As of Fall, 1981, 145 sons and daughters of employees are receiving Firestone Scholarship aid. NOTHING MORE BASIC Without customers we’d be gone • Everybody’s concerned or affected with the cost of liv ing and our financial wellbeing. How Firestone and other companies are doing, financially affects the economy. The ‘state of the economy’ is not something that we just hear of but can’t do anything about. Employed people directly affect their company’s financial wellbeing, as well as affecting the country. A good example: Wages, principal cost of everything. What happens if wages go up without corresponding in creases in production? That simply drives up the cost of living for everybody. So, that’s why we seek improved productivity (output of our labors) and keep on making in vestments in tools and materials to work with. This helps to get the work done as well and as efficiently as possible. An industry that produces things for sale owes its ex istence to customers who buy and use those products. Keeping customers is another example of how every em ployee can affect the economy. All payroll and employment are derived from customers. Keeping Firestone’s customers satisfied is a team effort because we must have good, aggressive people in all phases of our business — administration, product design, engineering, production, sales and distribution, etc. But we must have dependable products to begin with. Our economy is all interrelated. Our job security is tied in with our company’s financial success. Nothing is more basic than that. And the company’s wellbeing rests on its people’s efforts.

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