LORDSTOWN, Ohio - Two United States Senators have now tried and failed to get a commitment from General Motors to secure the future of the GM Lordstown plant.

GM has not said it will close the Lordstown plant, but it is down to just one shift and a dozen more workers are being laid off this week. People are worried.

Twenty years ago the Valley backed the "Bring It Home" campaign which helped to bring the Cobalt to Lordstown and saved the plant from closing.

Now, with thousands of lost jobs and an uncertain future for Lordstown, plans are in the works for another grassroots campaign.

"I've had a meeting here and a lot of people in the community have offered a  lot of support. So we're kind of in the process of getting something like that going. Right now I just want to make sure that it's ready to go and everything is set before we start launching anything like that," said David Green, President of UAW Local 1112 at Lordstown.

Green says many elected leaders also are getting on board, including Sen. Sherrod Brown who met with Lordstown workers in August to outline his new bill called American Cars, American Jobs Act.  He was pushing for the bill again this week before the Senate Finance Committee and said he has shared the Lordstown story with President Trump.

"I told the president about what was happening, I personally told him. Now I'm hopeful that he would speak up and call General Motors," said Brown.

But, the auto industry has changed drastically since the Valley's campaign efforts two decades ago. So could a grassroots effort see similar success today?

"It has to be more than a public relations campaign," said Bernard Swiecki at the Center for Automotive Research. 

Swiecki believes GM will also look for incentive from community leaders, as well as existing infrastructure to base any future decisions.

"So that existing tooling may be quite useful for making a future car based utility vehicle in Lordstown," said Swiecki.

But, perhaps the most critical element, Swiecki said, is the relationship with the local workforce.

"It really matters that the local union have a good relationship with plant management that the company can then rely on for the launch of a subsequent vehicle," said Swiecki.

UAW 1112 President David Green feels that GM's non-committal position on Lordstown may be the company not wanting to show it's hand heading into new contract talks with the union.

"Because we've got contract talks coming up next year some of this might be posturing. You know, they don't want to let the cat out of the bag so to speak until a lot of the national agreement contract stuff is settled," Green added.

Green said the key issue in that new contract for Lordstown will be product allocation. 

"I think it's premature to expect any big decisions," said Peter DeLorzeno, Editor-in-Chief at Autoextremist.com. He said with NAFTA negotiations up in the air, he wouldn't expect GM to make any major decisions just yet. "The disruption of NAFTA and the whole tariff question has pretty much paralyzed the car companies who are involved."