In the thicket of numbers embedded in the U.S. automobile industry, there are real lives, real families wondering what will happen, and what their financial destiny will be in the next year or two.

There’s a guy like Rob, who right out of high school began working for a major auto components supplier, and over time worked his way up to a middle management position. When times were good, his Kentucky-based company sent him south to Harlingen to work as a manager at a facility that supplied parts and components to mostly General Motors-linked maquiladoras in Matamoros and Reynosa.

For nearly three years, Rob and his family, Kentucky natives with a southern twang to prove it, lived in Harlingen, and came to love a region that seemed entirely foreign to them at first. It seemed as if they were heading for a good stay in South Texas when word came that Rob’s company would close its Harlingen facility, which it did last spring, when U.S. auto sales really began falling.

It got worse when Rob and his family returned to Kentucky. His company layed off Rob, on a temporary basis and with some compensation, hoping to bring him back full-time when things got better. He did return to his job over the summer, but now looks at the huge struggles of General Motors and wonders how much longer he will keep his job.

I came to know Rob during his Harlingen days when our teenage daughters played on a basketball traveling team of Rio Grande Valley girls. We shared our love of the sport, along with getting to know a little about each other’s respective industries. When I read the stories about the struggles of the U.S. automotive industry - and whether the federal government should bail it out with a financial rescue package - I think of people like Rob.

The numbers - and implications - of what happens to GM, Ford and Chrysler are staggering. For all of its problems, the U.S. auto industry still makes up 20 percent of the declining manufacturing sector in this country. The automakers and their vast supplier network make up 2.3 percent of the nation’s economic production. The Big Three automakers employ about 240,000 workers, and their suppliers an additional 2.3 million. That amounts to nearly 2 percent of the nation’s workforce.

If you believe some claims, the Big Three won’t make it to January 2009, (when a president more friendly to the U.S. auto industry takes office), without a multi-billion dollar financial rescue package from the federal government. Many in the political world, (mostly conservative-leaning), say U.S. automakers should be allowed to fail, or file for bankruptcy. Too bad, they say, auto company management - and overbearing unions - are to blame for making cars that many Americans have no desire to purchase.

Democrats, meanwhile, with their closer ties to labor and having a more blue-collar bent, say the Big Three must be saved in some fashion lest an already struggling U.S. economy go from recession to something far worse. Incoming President Obama says he wants to help U.S. automakers under certain conditions, which include a retooling of the industry and the production of more fuel-efficient automobiles that will also utilize emerging technologies to create a more green/eco-friendly world.

And how about this scenario: If the Big Three were to fail, could foreign car companies pick up the wreckage by increasing production in their U.S. plants?

A Nov. 17 story in the New York Times  examines such a scenario. There are auto industry experts, as cited in the Times  story, who believe Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and BMW, are established enough in the U.S. with their existing plants to take control of the industry and the supplier network that is attached to it. How would that look and would Americans be willing to accept the notion that all of the automobiles they buy are rooted in a foreign country?

“You would have an auto industry in the United States more like that of Mexico and Canada: foreign-owned,” said Sean McAlinden, of the Center for Automotive Research, in the Times article.

That would be a shocker and huge ego buster to U.S. pride. Ultimately, the Big Three may have to file for bankruptcy, which would allow the automakers to restructure, tear up old labor contracts, and come back as smaller, leaner companies.

“When we talk about bankruptcy, we’re not talking about them disappearing,” said one auto industry analyst, Chris Vavares, in a story in USA Today this week. “Maybe three become two, and the two are are both leaner and meaner.”

The mood of the American public seems to be one of putting a stop to goverment bailouts - or at least putting more stringent conditions on those industries receiving federal support. In the interconnected financial and economic world we live in, the struggles of one industry touch many others. Rob of Kentucky, like many other Americans, waits to see what it will all mean to him.

- R.D. Cavazos

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