Friendly Takeover

Lieber, a Pittsburgh lawyer and writer, spent five years preparing this straightforward narrative account of Ernest T. Weir's successful Depression-era steel company, the changing postwar technology of plastics and aluminum that severely damaged the firm's competitiveness, and ``the ultimate experiment in capitalism''--an employee stock ownership plan facilitated by federal legislation and by tax rulings of the 1980s--that brought the moribund company and the West Virginia community of Weirton back to life. The story is full of industrial and personal drama and accounts of labor management conflict and accommodation. It sheds new light on employee-owner initiatives that arise in response to the need to preserve jobs in ailing firms and offers factual guidance for comparable rescues in industries hard-pressed by economic adversity. (June)