Lordstown, Ohio - 18 November 2008

1. Wide exterior of the General Motors (GM) plant in Lordstown

2. Wide of the building, traffic passing

3. Wide pan across building exterior

4. Various of Lordstown village sign

5. Low-angle shot of street with snow

6. Low-angle interior of GM workers at a bowling alley

7. Low-angle of bowling ball rolling down lane towards pin

8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Carl Krawiec, GM Plant Employee:

"Well a lot of people are kind of nervous, they don't know what's going on."

9. Wide of men bowling

10. Low-angle shot pins going down as bowling ball hits

11. SOUNDBITE: (English) Leonard Schober, GM Plant Employee:

"I believe it would really hurt. It would be devastating to this whole area."

13. Various exteriors of Lordstown Diner

14. Lordstown Diner owner, Theresa Golden, folding napkins

15. Close-up of Golden wrapping cutlery in napkins

16. SOUNDBITE: (English) Theresa Golden, Lordstown Diner owner:

"If this plant would have close it's going to devastate this area. It's going to devastate all the businesses, the school systems, everything."

17. Mid of sign for Scarsella's Pizzeria

18. Various of Scarsella's Pizzeria owner, Sean Kushman, making pizzas behind counter

19. SOUNDBITE: Sean Kushman, Scarsella's Pizzeria owner:

"I think Lordstown will be a ghost town. There's not much out here. There's you know, basically the plant, a few other businesses out here that the plant deals with, whether it's the seeding companies or the companies that make the interior for the vehicles and if they close obviously there wouldn't be jobs for the other folks and they would probably shut down as well, it would just leave the town a ghost-town."

20. Wide of United Auto Workers President, Jim Graham sitting at his desk

21. Cutaway of nameplate on desk

22. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jim Graham, United Auto Workers President:

"If they don't get the loan, it's... I don't want to even think what's going to happen. Locally shutting down our plant would be devastating. Nationally, shutting down General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are going to affect about 3 (m) million people directly; indirectly the ripple effect is going to be astronomical. That's going to literally drive us deeper into this depression that we're already in."

Georgetown, Kentucky - 18 November 2008

23. Wide of Main Street

24. Close up of Main Street sign

25. Various of Toyota plant sign

26. Mid interior of people in Georgetown diner

27. Various of diners inside restaurant

28. SOUNDBITE: (English) Benjamin Bynum, Georgetown resident:

"Well I think Toyota has made some better decisions as far as more economical and environmentally friendly cars, which have proved to be a wiser business choice. I feel at the moment, better that Toyota is here and doing well even with their Prius sales in the area, as opposed to GM and Chrysler and Ford needing a bailout from Washington."

29. SOUNDBITE: (English) Sheri Gruchow, Georgetown Diner manager:

"You haven't seen Toyota on the news at all, you know saying about job cuts or anything basically like GM and Ford. You know they haven't laid off anybody that I know of, you know so, or has been on the news at least, that I know of, so it makes this community safer basically. Feel safer at least."

30. Mid of people in diner

31. Wide pull out of car driving past Toyota sign

Residents in Ohio are considering how the collapse of the auto industry could set off a catastrophic chain reaction in the US economy, as the Senate's top Democrat on Wednesday called off a planned vote this week on a US 25 (b) billion bailout package.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday that while he wanted to figure out some way to help Detroit's struggling Big Three - efforts to do so had stalled.

With the vote stalled - residents in Lordstown, Ohio are preparing for the worst.

Earlier this month, GM announced that about 3,600 workers will be laid off indefinitely, beginning early next year at 10 of its assembly plants.

Those cuts will hit Lordstown hard, eliminating 850 jobs from the assembly plant there, roughly 25-percent of the workforce.

Another 162 jobs will come from the GM fabricating plant in Lordstown, resulting in total job losses of more than one thousand people.

At the Wedgewood Bowling alley, where many GM employees head to after work, the upcoming layoffs were top of mind.

Workers were concerned about their own jobs, and also the wider implications for the whole Ohio Rust Belt area.

Diner owner Theresa Golden expects her business to be hit hard in the coming months and she fears that with plant workers out of work, the whole town will be facing decreased tax revenues and losses across the board.

Local pizzeria owner Sean Kushman shared Golden's concerns and said Lordstown will become a ghost town.

Residents of Lordstown have held high hopes for a congressional bailout of the auto industry but with talks on Capitol Hill stalled optimism is dwindling.

The president of the United Auto Workers Union, Jim Graham said a failure of GM would be "astronomical" for the entire nation.

US auto companies employ nearly a quarter-million workers, and more than 730-thousand other people have jobs producing the materials and parts that go into cars.

About 1 (m) million on top of that work in dealerships nationwide.

If just one of the auto giants were to go belly up, some estimates put US job losses next year as high as 2.5 (m) million.

In Georgetown, Kentucky, where the foreign owned Toyota plant is based, optimism was a little higher.

Residents there said pointed to success of Toyota's Prius car as a reason they believe the company was not in the same dire situation as its competitors.

However on Wednesday Toyota said it would be forced to reduce production in the United States to cope with slowing sales in the world's largest economy.

The company said it will stop production at all its plants in the US and Canada for two extra days in addition to the regular Christmas holidays next month and cut about half of 500 temporary workers at the Kentucky plant by March.

The White House and congressional Republicans rejected Democrats' plan to dip into the 700 (b) billion US dollar Wall Street rescue fund to finance loans to US Automakers.

However a bipartisan group from auto industry states is working to cut a deal on a scaled-down aid package.

If agreement can be reached, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate could still vote on it as part of a measure to extend jobless benefits.