August 12, 1981

Top executives who receive stock options from their companies will find the new tax code treats these options quite handsomely. Moreover, employees who do not normally receive stock options may find it easier to win them as part of their compensation packages as a result of the new tax bill, benefit specialists predict. ''Because the options will be a much better deal for employees, there may be some tendency on the part of companies to spread them a little further down,'' said David N. Swinford, a principal at Sibson & Company, a management consulting firm, based in Princeton, N.J., that specializes in employee compensation. ''If a company believes that the stock market will boom in the 1980's, or if it is a threshold company or an undervalued company that believes its stock will take off, it may see the stock option as a way to attract and retain middle management people and superior technical and professional people.

A Senate subcommittee has sharply criticized the Labor Department's five-year investigation of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund. The subcommittee report said that officials had wasted a ''historic opportunity'' to reform the fund and rid the union of the influence of organized crime. Accusing the department of poor management, incompetence and bureaucratic infighting in its investigation, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a 190-page report that the much heralded inquiry had been a failure. The report, which is to be released tomorrow, said that the Labor Department had not pursued criminal leads and had prevented its investigators from conducting a thorough inquiry into the pension fund, which has been described for years by law-enforcement officials as a lending institution for organized crime figures.

THE soybean has been the ''meat of the Orient'' for more than 4,000 years. Considering its nutritional merits and extraordinary versatility as a food, the growing list of potential health benefits associated with its consumption and the cost of its competition, it could become an important factor in the American diet as well. Currently more than half the soybeans grown in this country are exported and most of what we keep is fed to animals or extracted for oil. Less than 3 percent goes into food products made from the whole bean. However, the market is slowly expanding and several major food companies are ready to hop on the bandwagon should one or more soy products (such as tofu, the soybean curd) show signs of catching on big. The Push for Soy Protein. The soybean is one of the best sources of vegetable protein. Forty percent of the bean's dry weight, and 11 percent after cooking, comes from protein. By comparison, a poached egg is 13 percent protein, American cheese is 23 percent protein and a hamburger is 22 percent protein. One cup of cooked soybeans provides a third of the daily amount of protein recommended for the average adult male.

Transport Minister Jean-Luc Pepin announced early this morning that full air traffic service would be restored between the United States and Canada at 8 A.M. eastern daylight time today. The announcement, coupled with an earlier statement that the crucial air traffic control center in Gander, Newfoundland, would resume normal trans-Atlantic aircraft guidance operations at 6:30 A.M. today, appeared to indicate the end of two days of transportation disruptions affecting thousands of travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. The Government also announced that a joint fact-finding group would be formed with the controllers' union to study the aircraft safety situation in the United States. Air traffic controllers had said they based their refusal to handle flights to and from the United States on safety considerations.

ABC and Westinghouse intend to announce a plan today to create a 24-hour news network for cable television fashioned after the allnews approach used by many radio stations. The project, scheduled to begin in the spring of 1982, would unite the editorial and financial resources of two of the nation's largest broadcasting entities. Until now, the area of news programming for cable has been left solely to Ted Turner's Atlanta-based Cable News Network. The announcement comes as the Federal Government is showing an increasing willingness to permit the three major television networks - ABC, NBC and CBS - and other large broadcasting companies to compete aggressively in new communications technologies.