No airbag can lessen the double-impact crash local Chrysler workers have suffered.

It's bad enough that they're losing their jobs after it was recently revealed that Chrysler plans to close the Kenosha engine plant by the end of next year. They're also paying for those jobs to be trucked to foreign soil.

Chrysler executives are taking in billions in taxpayer-funded loans to salvage what's left of the company they nearly destroyed. One of the ways they plan to become leaner is to build a new engine in a Mexican plant.

That's the same promising Phoenix engine the automaker had planned just two years ago to build in Kenosha. State and local governments offered to pitch in more than $16 million in incentives to get the operation going.

President Barack Obama and his staff cannot hold the bailout money ransom in exchange for assurances that Chrysler would stay in business. That would be reneging on a promise to keep government interference to a minimum.

Instead, this is one more indication the aid was a flawed idea in the first place. Without an income, 800 local autoworkers won't be able to stimulate anything.

We're hopeful that officials can appeal to Chrysler's new partner, Fiat, to bring some of its engine work to the area. Kenosha Mayor Keith Bosman has even raised the idea of building tractor engines for the CNH Global plant in Mount Pleasant.

Blame for Chrysler's diminished health can be parceled out in many directions. Hefty benefit packages the unions negotiated over the years are part of the problem.

If management's handling of this closure is any indication of its competency, though, there's no doubt who's most responsible for the company's dire straits. First, the company negotiated concessions with union workers, assuring them those cuts would put them on safer ground. Within two days, workers learned they had exhaled too soon.

No, news of the impending closing didn't wasn't delivered personally at the factory in a sensitively planned meeting. It came in an obscure court filing that broadsided everyone.

Nor did CEO Robert Nardelli mention it in a call with Wisconsin leaders the day of the bankruptcy paperwork. Nardelli mixed up Kenosha with a similar facility that will remain open in Michigan, later apologizing for creating "further confusion."

Chrysler workers deserved better.