Hi Tech Futures

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In the beginning Probably as many as 30 different locations were looked at including Silicon Valley That got paired down to six and then to three three looked at exceedingly seriously The factors that went into selecting North Carolina, the research triangle park, would have included First of all the quality of life in this particular business you almost have to talk being Sunbelt or have some other unusual attraction there's a part of the industry that is in Colorado for example where you got the mountains and the skiing and rock climbing all that sort of thing but Housing was relatively inexpensive and for some of the other places that we were attracting talent for That was important because they could do exceedingly well, many of these people could do exceedingly well in transferring from someplace else with the equity that they had in a home there being able to acquire

Either a larger home, larger lot, more what they wanted or what not so that was important Jack Larson, manager relations operation at the new general electric microelectronics center and research triangle park in North Carolina. He's giving reasons GE decided to locate here. In these times of high unemployment the hope is that new high technology industries will bring jobs and foster a strong economic future in the state. I'm Famicil Henderson, the fact that you've got the universities here in this area just just starting with the North Carolina state UNC Duke and go on from there but the fact that you have that these are here was exceedingly important because that's another feature that is common to people in this industry is that they contain They continue their education. Leaders in education and politics provided the impetus for founding research triangle park in the 1950s. It was seen as a way to bring a large agricultural and textile state more jobs and diversification. One might conclude is worked. While unemployment nationally is over 10% unemployment in North Carolina is at 8.7% and in the three county area feeding research triangle park is usually in the 4% range.

The unemployment in the research triangle areas probably attributed to things three things the presence of the university and high concentration of the universities here state government and the research triangle park. The research and development operations of these industries are not as affected as the manufacturing industries because research has to keep going on they've got to keep looking into the future. They can't stop that or they know that it will hurt them in the long run they'll fall behind their competitors. Steve Mehan public information director with the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

The Sunbelt itself has been a pretty fast-clawing area though is it likely that the competition for industries in the future will come from other Sunbelt states or is it becoming much more national in scope. It's national in scope in connection with the electronics industry particularly they are going to look probably all across the country and we're having to compete with many more states I should say that I think on the electronics industry. They're obviously interested in the northeastern area with Boston and Massachusetts where they're heavily concentrated already. But generally we're still very very confident and we think that by historical coincidence or foresight whichever you want to say we're we are very lucky in North Carolina and fortunate in North Carolina and that we have placed a heavy emphasis on government business and educational cooperation and that is exactly what the electronics industry is looking for. And it's not the kind of thing you can create overnight you can't change attitudes of entire states business communities and educational community and the government and get them to work together if they haven't been doing it for decades at a time.

We have in North Carolina and it really is a great attraction to the electronics industry. In addition when you throw a crop throw on top of all that the quality of life in the state is probably unparalleled except for maybe California which is one of the main reasons they're in California. We think we have a tremendous package that we can offer our micro electronics center I've got to mention has already helped us this year track some of those industries I mentioned earlier Texas instruments probably wouldn't have had the interest they had in the state if we didn't have that micro electronics center they aren't that interested maybe even ever using the micro electronics center but it represents to them a commitment by this state to train. Technicians and to train engineers analog devices specifically mentioned in their announcement in Greensboro that the state's commitment to micro electronics through the center played a factor in their decision to come here so that center has already paid for itself many times over even though it's a tremendous investment and we will continue to have to put large sums of money into it to support it.

It will pay you know untold dividends for the state of North Carolina. In addition to the general electric micro electronics center the state of North Carolina is creating its own micro electronics center the state legislature this spring appropriated twenty four million dollars and started money for that purpose. There were some questions on the kind a number of jobs it would provide and possible effects on the environment. We're aware and sensitive of the environmental concerns about the electronics industry at the same time the state with being 11th largest toxic waste discharger in the country is sensitive to that issue to begin with. Governor Hunt has tried to jump out ahead of it by forming a toxic waste management board and to look at that issue we have stronger regulations in some cases in other states and some of the problems that they've had the electronics industry with toxic waste disposal in California or before the national toxic waste disposal laws went into effect which controlled the disposal of those waste from the manufacturing process to the grave so to speak.

And so we think we're in a different ball game here in addition we're since we're in the front end or the back end depending on how you look at it of the development of this industry we're going to get the highest grade and the most and the latest operations and most up to date and modern operations of the industry when it comes in which should also benefit. North Carolina's governor Jim Hunt has seen a very emotional reaction to the creation of a PCB dump site in Warren County North Carolina. Soil that was deliberately contaminated with polychlorinated by phenols was dug up from over 200 miles of the state's roadways and buried in that sparsely populated largely agricultural county so he's sensitive to environmental concerns.

Of high technology does not create much waste at all. They for example they recycle their water and whatever little bit of impurities are in it you know are strained out in amounts to just a tiny bit they really don't generate a lot of waste. Some of them do use chemicals it depends on what comes the things that we have here now do not generate a lot of waste and it will depend on the things that come down the road. All the more reason why we've got to develop ways of disposing of waste because even the factors we now have in North Carolina do generate waste and we want those jobs. And so we've got to move ahead to try to develop alternatives to landfills we've got to develop recycling and incineration. And we've got to work a lot harder in trying to get those kinds of facilities developed for this state there may have to be some commercial landfills in this country there will have to be some but our focus should not be on that.

And yet if we're going to keep industry going and have jobs and the people in Warren County need them very much then we're going to have to be able to dispose of waste. Governor Hunt has made jobs a top priority since he was first elected in 1976 industries are coming and settling not just in research triangle park but across the state. In the 1975 recession unemployment in the state reached 12% which was above the national average that's not likely to happen this time around although thousands of jobs and textiles have been lost in recent years. That's traditionally big industry in the state is trying to regroup Steve Mehan. Well textile industry is probably going undergoing one of the greatest transformations of one of the nation's major industries in this country through millions and millions of dollars of investment for modernization. And quite frankly some of the side effects of that modernization has been a loss of jobs but at the same time if they hadn't gone through this modernization.

It's possible that many more thousands of other jobs would have been lost and the industry itself would have been crippled. So the statistics are that there's been a drop of about 40,000 jobs since 1976 or seven in the textile industry. But really I think the drop would have been considerably more than that if they hadn't undergone this transformation. The result of this transformation is that the industry is stronger, it's more productive, the jobs are often more challenging, higher paying, more skilled required than in the more traditional industry of the decades pass. Looking ahead Mehan sees jobs in the electronics and high technology industries for the future but he also fights the metalworking, pharmaceutical and transportation related industries as areas for growth and employment in the state. But a strategy in any industry into an area often takes a lot of time, effort and person to person contact. As an example Union Carbide that just had their dedication about 60 days ago was the first contact made by a representative of the foundation back in 1960.

And so down through the years we've maintained our relationship with Union Carbide and finally we found an area of common concern and interest and we were able to bring their new chemical agricultural center to the park. Ned Huffman, Executive Vice President of Research Triangle Park Foundation, considering the companies at the park. Well of the total number that are here which now is about 43, five of them do light manufacturing or assembly work. The rest of them are generally in research activities and some headquarters work. You have 20,000 employees in the park and they are earning in salaries and wages about a half a billion dollars a year.

Now this money is spent on everything in the triangle communities from automobiles to cars to paying their church pledges and hopefully the United Fund pledges and the money generally stays here at home. Well when you do this then that means that others are going to have to be employed in order to service them. So you have the service group that comes into play. The US Chamber of Commerce has published figures that one job produces X number of jobs. I don't know that these figures are right but suppose one job created only one quarter of another job. That would mean 5,000 additional people would have had to be employed just to be part of the park. So now we have 25,000 people and they are probably earning 700,000 dollars a year.

And so the pyramiding goes on and there is no way that we can give an exact accounting of this but when you look at all of the taxes that are paid and the money that turns over here it becomes a very significant force in the community. The first major employer at the park in 1961 was Kim Strand which is now Monsanto. But things really took off in 1965 when the International Business Machines Company, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and some others came in. Now about a billion dollars worth of development is in the park. It also contains the highest concentration of PhDs per capita anywhere in America. Again the University atmosphere helps. It was said early on in the life of the park that if the three universities were on top of Mount Mitchell you would find the research triangle park at the base saying essentially that without the universities there is no park and that is a fact. In Newsweek they were quoting some information about the park here and we talked with them about establishing new parks.

Here the research triangle park in North Carolina is successful and they look on us with envy and say well gee if they can do it down in the south most certainly up here in the northern part of the country. We too can do this. Well that isn't necessarily so. You have to have the ingredients that makes a whole thing work and while we've had 80 or 90 visitors different groups from different parts of the country here in the past year trying to learn how to do it. They're not taking into account the fact that there is a very very limited market in this in this type of activity. Among other of the high tech industries that have found a home in the research triangle park are Bristol Meyers, Burles Welcom, Hewlett Packard, the Instrument Society of America and the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Edelacom is site manager of the Agricultural Research Division of Union Carbides Research Triangle Park Facility.

The nature of our work here is basically research and development, engineering, product development and marketing. We don't do any production at this location. Actually we have about 450 employees. We've actually hired 200 employees locally and relocated the rest from a number of different locations around the eastern part of the country. We foresee for the coming year a difficult economic situation but we believe in the Ag Products Division which we make up here at this location a stable situation for the coming years for our employment is concerned. North Carolina provides a very favorable business climate. For example we've been able to find a good number of trained employees particularly chemical technicians and there's an abundant workforce here. You mentioned this is a favorable business climate. It's a fact that North Carolina has remained on the few non-union stakes of very much of a factor when you're looking here.

That's an important element of it but in addition to that I think the work ethic of the local people is still a very important consideration. The Agricultural Products Union Carbide produces include insecticides, herbicides and plant growth regulators. They take advantage of area universities for employees at this site. Our relationships are partly to do with the types of people that come out of their undergraduate and the graduate schools as far as chemical engineering goes as far as chemists go and other students in the agricultural area. We have some relationships also with some of the two-year schools as far as training technicians and in far as some of them are concerned with providing two-year business graduates. If we're successful and we certainly plan to be we will be developing new products which will be more and more specific in their activity and they will the unit price on a particular product will probably increase but it will do much greater job out in the field in agriculture than the current ones do.

Chips are essentially electronic circuits that are used in some other device. Historically the primary price that they're used is computers but they're going into you wouldn't believe the number of devices or appliances or whatever you use during a day or a week that already have a computer chip in it. Michael Arson manager relations operation semiconductor division for the general electric macroelectronics center in research triangle park. Would you believe that there is out now a a golf game in a wristwatch. You can play you can sit in the boring meeting and play 18 holes or golf on your wristwatch if you want to.

There's another one out a breathalyzer where you can buy your own breathalyzer you've been to a party you're not sure whether you should drive home or whether you should let your say boyfriend or husband drive home or whatever. Maybe the host has the breathalyzer and at the front door decides whether or not to let people drive home or send a moment of taxi that's got some potential uses again it's in the snob appeal area at the moment. At the beginning so was the digital wristwatch in the beginning so was the calculator your automobile oh man your automobile is loaded with with computer chips. You wouldn't believe how many computer chips in it right now anything from speed controls to dimming lights to your exhaust system to your speed controls. The regulation of gasoline reminding you to turn your lights on and on and off or what not.

Expansion in the use of the silicon chip and semiconductors is what a number of North Carolina's political leaders are banking on including Governor Hunt. They're expecting jobs in the production of silicon chips and even the production of products using the chips. But some question the allocation of twenty four million dollars by the general assembly believing assembly land production jobs and silicon chips won't pay so well and the environment will suffer. Yet the twenty four million dollars for the North Carolina Micodectronic Center will be gone. Well we're doing some things to make sure that some of the things that have occurred in our occurring in Silicon Valley won't repeat itself. But more fundamental than that essentially the things that people get most concerned about within silicon value or that are talking about the most often are for example traffic the population squeeze the overcrowding the congestion on the highways. That is a those things are a function that are unique to Silicon Valley and you virtually couldn't make enough mistakes to cause that to occur here.

The reason is that Silicon Valley is that little strip of land that basically runs from San Jose on the south end of that strip to the north end which is San Francisco. And it's physically constrained in terms of where these where you can utilize land on which you can construct industry and it's a very narrow strip. And so you've got San Francisco Bay on the east and on the north and you've got the mountains and eventually the ocean on the west. And things have tended to stop at San Jose so traffic the cost of land all of that the small all of that comes because you've got just a huge number of people in a very small geographic area and you don't have that problem here you don't have physical constraints in North Carolina. You don't have the constraint of the bay you don't have a constraint of the ocean you know the constraint of the mountains nothing prevents you from from from having a silicon or semiconductor industry in North Carolina that stretches from border to border.

And in fact I think that may happen although I think the micro electronic center of North Carolina is going to tend to cause a bit of a hub. So you may find things going circular to the micro electronic center of North Carolina rather than in a strip but that means they could go quite a distance. There still was at that time and still are concerns about some of the environmental waste that that might occur with the semiconductor industry just what kind of waste products are there and how are they handled. I can only speak for ourselves in this regard this facility is the newest because of the time we built it and because of the type of facility it also is the most expensive. It is also the most technical most advanced world class semiconductor semiconductor facility in the world but say free world at least. Now one of the greatest things that were paid attention to and I was when I came here last July the plans for it were already on the board and they had they had experts doing the designing on this.

But one of the things that pleased me the most was the amount of detail and attention that was being paid to the question of the natural resources and the use of toxic or potentially hazardous material and what was going to happen to it. You've got within the facility where the employees are working you either have the material being the material is stored in bulk in a separate facility. What material is this? I wish I could tell you what they all are I'm not technical enough to make sure that I'm going to tell you what they are. But they're physically in bulk in a separate facility and either piped or brought in smaller quantities to the area where employees would generally work.

The disposal then has done in a couple of ways in some cases you can recycle it and therefore reuse it. Obviously the more you can recycle if the recycling process itself is not more expensive than buying a new is the preferred way to go a it may be cheaper but be it allows you to have lesser amounts to dispose of those materials which could be harmful. There are now laws which require the disposition of these in prescribed manners we do not accumulate large quantities of essentially waste toxic or hazardous materials there are limits to it and so there will be disposal through those chains of disposal that are regulated. And that's the only way to go.

A lot of water is used in production of silicon chips that were concerns that providing water for the GE microelectronics center would overburden the Durham County water system which supplies it. Well nothing is worse than to have to have a community expand or build the new waste treatments facility or or a new water supply system just because a new industry came in although in the long run that's going to have to happen anyway but we we're not going to be a contributor to it. It turns out that the amount of water that we're going to use in a day and discharge to the waste treatment facility because we reclaim it and we recycle it and we reclaim it and we recycle it over and over and over again. So the total amount that we use in a day and discharge in a day is 35,000 gallons. Now how much is 35,000 gallons that might sound like a lot but that's about the amount in an average home in the ground swimming pool. So that's not very much.

Just what percentage of the jobs here are involved to search and how many are assembly and production type positions. The total employment of let's say right today I think the number is roughly 147 of that number only 27 are what you might call factory type personnel but if you saw the facility it doesn't resemble a factory of any kind that you've ever seen. And you think of factories in North Carolina and the North Carolina is a relatively young state in terms of industrialization except for a few basic industries but it doesn't resemble a factory like anything you've ever seen. The work that they do is very precise is done under the most rigorous of conditions so to call it a factory or to call it a production facility or to call it anything like that is really a misnomer because people have in their own minds in image and what we've got just doesn't fit that image. Let me give you an example the output of this will call factory output for a week out of our plan could go out in one forklift truck so you're not going to have large trucks running in and out hauling product in and out or hauling raw materials in and out.

That sort of thing because we're dealing in chips that are when they are completed and takes multiple weeks to complete a single chip but a single chips as big as maybe yours are my little fingernail quarter inch by quarter inch. The e-machroelectronics center that makes those quarter inch by quarter inch chips costs $56 million to build since the current staff is largely professional and technical Larsen feels it would be inappropriate to reveal salaries since the figures would be inflated. He suggests production workers will have to be trained differently to take advantage of the microelectronics and other high tech industries. I'm not sure they're going to need more time in school the time they spend in school has to be applied to things that to subjects that maybe they traditionally haven't taken maybe courses that haven't yet been developed.

Part of the training will take place on the job we currently work with Durham Tech the people take a course at Durham Tech which we worked with them. They were very very smart the community college system in North Carolina is exceedingly good and I've got to give them all the credit in the world. The Durham Tech people went to foothills college which is in Silicon Valley which happened to be the initiator of the training of these types of people for Silicon Valley. And they went to school they got their curriculum they knew what they turned and they just brought it back so that they had an ability to just transplant it if necessary what they need now is the equipment to be able to implement it. But we have taken and used and are helping Durham Tech create a one week course which is partly familiarization and at this point maybe mostly familiarization and orientation. Larsen explains even after training at a community college the prospective worker would get additional on the job training because each industry operates differently.

But efforts are underway to keep industries and jobs coming into North Carolina. Research triangle park has unique history and conditions that may never be duplicated. But the entire state offers a good quality of life, a non-union workforce that still displays the work ethic and enthusiasm at all levels of government to have high technology industries and jobs in their future. For WUNC, I'm Thay Mitchell Henderson.