Inside Report (3)

Here's one shoe some workers wish were on the other foot.

Some 22,000 US shoe workers have lost jobs since the White House allowed footwear import restrictions to run out in June 1981. Shoe sales are rising. But unemployment among US shoe workers, mostly low-wage employees in small towns, is now 18 percent. Thousands of other workers are on short workweeks. The reason: rising imports. At the end of '81, imports captured 51 percent of the US nonrubber footwear market. That share has risen to more than 60 percent since then.

The industry, its unions, and 150 members Congress are trying to pressure the administration into putting the squeeze on shoe exporting nations for ''fairer'' trade policies.