The UAW is killing small town Indiana and while they are at it…America.

I used to think the United Auto Workers union was in denial. Now, I realize it’s us, not them, who refuses to deal with reality. It is time to stop and deal with the elephant in the room—the ideological and greedy union bosses who help turn small towns into ghost towns.

With the sale of Chrysler to a management company known for restructuring failing companies by laying off workers and slashing costs to turn a profit, it would be reasonable to expect the trend of auto plants and suppliers to close. Those of us in the Midwest have become accustomed to the not-so-occasional plant closure. Plants in Kokomo, Marion, Connersville and around the Midwest continue to struggle to reduce production costs in order to survive.

Let's not pretend. The reality is that the UAW leadership is content in killing certain communities in order to maintain wages and benefits for their diminishing union members that far exceed the market value. And while they continue to demand a 70-dollar-an-hour wage and health care coverage better than almost any other workers – Americans struggle to afford cars and trucks they slowly make and increasingly look to foreign automakers producing cars here in the U.S.

American automakers simply cannot meet the labor costs demanded by the UAW, their pension obligations, their health care commitments and turn a profit.

As American automobile manufacturers continue to struggle, foreign automakers thrive. One big reason for their success is that foreign automakers like Toyota and Honda are building cars here in America without union labor.

There is nothing unique about what the auto union is doing in Indiana or Michigan. It’s happening in every city and town in America where we built our local economies around the outdated auto union mentality. The union bosses say only they can protect workers for the sweatshop conditions of the 1920’s and 1930’s. But step in to a Toyota or Honda facility and the first you’ll notice is that they are so clean you can eat off the floor. Virtually everything is automated at these modern facilities. No more large, fast-moving blades lacking hand protection to cut metal fenders. Now the cutting is done with computerized lasers with workers shielded behind a wall of protection.

Workers for Toyota and Honda have found their wages and working conditions are favorable, and they don’t think it necessary to send a portion of every paycheck to the auto union bosses. Workers are happy, motivated and they receive great benefits. These workers are respected and listened to by management.

When it comes time to renegotiate their contracts, union bosses like to say it’s all or nothing. To many Americans, that means the American auto plants or plants of their suppliers are about to close. This means our communities suffer, local economies dry up, our home property values fall and the Midwestern towns that for so long prospered with the help of the American auto industry wither and die.

Randall Thompson is president of the Peace & Prosperity Project