Business Notes

LABOR Back to the Pits in Anger

It was one of the longest and most violent U.S. strikes since World War II, and it summoned images of the feuding Hatfields and McCoys. By the time it ended last month, the United Mine Workers' 15-month walkout against the A.T. Massey Coal Co. had left one person dead and hundreds wounded, and caused millions of dollars' worth of damage on both sides of the Kentucky-West Virginia line.

Last week the first miners, some of them still bitter against their employer, began to be recalled. "I don't guess this is the way any of us wanted it to end," said Pete Adkins, a collier from Delbarton, W. Va.

The miners say they are angry for many reasons. Just 45 of the 1,100 strikers have so far been brought back, and the company refuses to rehire those who participated in the violence. Several of the mines have been sold or leased to new operators; others have been closed. Workers are also furious over the company's insistence that they return to work under conditions set separately by Massey's 17 subsidiaries, rather than under a single set of terms. Although the war between the firm and the U.M.W. has ended, new skirmishes could soon break out in court. BROADCASTING Changing Casts at ABC

Executives of both companies expressed great delight last year when Capital Cities Communications (est. 1985 sales: $1 billion) agreed to buy the four-times-as-large American Broadcasting Cos. for $3.5 billion. Still, few experts were surprised last week when Fred Pierce, 52, resigned as ABC president only days after the merger officially took effect.

A 30-year ABC veteran, Pierce became president in 1983. Though he ran the network during the 1970s when it climbed to first place in the prime-time ratings race, Pierce also presided over ABC's recent slump to third place. In an effort to reverse that slide, Pierce last November appointed Brandon Stoddard, who headed the company's motion-picture operations, president of ABC Entertainment. He is expected to keep that post.

Capital Cities moved quickly to replace Pierce with one of its own. It named John Sias, an executive vice president who has been running the Capital Cities publishing division, president of ABC. Pierce will leave ABC a wealthy man. He held stock worth $4 million at the time of the merger, and will receive $2 million still owed him under a contract that runs through 1989. CORPORATE NAMES From the Plow to the Stars

The U.S. was still a stripling in 1831 when Cyrus McCormick invented the first workable mechanical reaper and went on to form a company, McCormick & Gray, to make and sell the revolutionary machine. By 1902 the firm had merged with four others and was called International Harvester. Last week the company (1985 sales: $3.5 billion) dropped that historic name. International Harvester, which last year sold its farm-implement business to the J I Case division of Tenneco, emerged from a nine-month-long name-lift operation as Navistar International. The new name, a blend of navigate and star, refers to the company's remaining line of business--medium and heavy trucks--and its goal of stellar performance.

International Harvester, which lost nearly $3 billion from 1980 to 1984, is spending about $10 million to change names. The tab includes consulting fees to Anspach Grossman Portugal, a New York City concern that, with the help of a computer, came up with 300 possible new designations. The International Harvester name, though, will not completely vanish. Case now owns it, along with the red-and-black IH logo, and is using both in advertising campaigns. AGRICULTURE Showdown at Guacamole Gulch

A shortage of avocados in California, which grows 80% of the U.S. crop, has produced a spectacular jump in the price of the fruit and turned the state's groves into a prime target for rustlers. While newly installed fences guard against intruders, plane and helicopter patrols circle overhead. They are on the lookout for rustlers, who have made off with thousands of pounds of the lucrative fruit. The thefts could cost producers up to $3 million by next October. So far, though, no one has been caught.

The thieves frequently hire pickers, who pluck away, looking like legitimate harvesters. In a few hours they can fill a pickup truck with avocados, which they then sell to wholesalers for more than $1 per lb. A year ago, before oversupply and rising water costs forced many growers out of business and helped cause the current shortage, the same fruit fetched about 27-c- per lb.

The ranchers, meanwhile, remain on the alert. Vows Steve White, a large producer whose groves have been struck: "I will fully prosecute anyone that I catch." Avocado rustling is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. ENTERTAINMENT Nostalgia Trip for the Tube

The best-known songs of the 1950s and 1960s were not sung by Elvis Presley, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. In fact few even made it to vinyl. Classic cuts such as The Jetsons, Leave It to Beaver and Gilligan's Island were heard over and over again as theme songs for television shows. Now, however, a two-record set called Television's Greatest Hits has put the hottest tunes in TV history on Billboard's pop albums chart. According to Executive Producer Steven Gottlieb, the record recognizes TV music as a piece of Americana. Says he: "People like to deny how much of our culture is centered around television."

Gottlieb, 28, is a long-haired chain smoker who works out of a cluttered apartment on Manhattan's Central Park South. A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, he launched his company, TeeVee Toons, in August 1984 and subsequently raised $250,000 to finance it. He then acquired the rights to 65 of TV's most memorable sound tracks and hired Composer Dave Erlanger, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, to produce the record. Erlanger re-created some songs that were unavailable or too scratchy to use. At $16.95, Gottlieb's album has sold 225,000 copies, and he is already working on Volume II.