In the face of a global credit crisis and a worldwide economic downturn, U.S. auto sales have slowed to a crawl. As insecurity spreads throughout the economy, consumers are delaying major purchases — and those who do visit auto showrooms are not finding credit available on reasonable terms.

The domestic auto industry simply cannot succeed in today’s unstable economic environment without immediate help from the federal government. And the costs of failure are unacceptable.

This isn’t just about three large Michigan-based companies and the 240,000 people who work for them, including 150,000 of our members. It’s also about thousands of car dealerships that are anchor businesses in cities and towns across America. It’s about thousands of small and medium-size businesses — employing millions of workers — that provide parts, logistics, research, engineering and other goods and services to Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. If a major domestic auto company were to fail, a significant number of supplier companies would also be in jeopardy. This would quickly affect all the companies that produce autos in the United States — including Toyota, Honda and Nissan — because many of them buy parts and services from the same group of suppliers.

A major disruption in the auto supply chain would quickly curtail production at auto plants, whether domestic or foreign-owned, throughout the United States. The cost of failure at even a single U.S. automaker would be millions of lost jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of lost sales and revenue spread across all 50 states.

In addition, more than a million retirees and dependents receive pension and health-care benefits from Chrysler, Ford and GM. If these companies are unable to meet their obligations, the human toll on retirees and their families will be devastating. It’s also possible that the failure of these companies could impose severe costs on the federal pension guaranty program and public health-care programs.

In the face of a looming economic catastrophe, it’s disappointing to see The Washington Post and some of its opinion writers indulge in old-fashioned Detroit-bashing — especially since these observers seem to be writing about the domestic auto industry of the 1970s.

It is not the actions of our members that have caused the crisis in today’s auto industry; the crisis is being driven by economic factors that have nothing to do with labor costs or factory performance. To the contrary, our contracts have put our employers in a position to compete.

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