Impact of GM cuts on Quinte region likely to be minimal

Chris King, chief executive officer with Quinte Economic Development Commission, said the closure of the GM plant will not affect Belleville as much as the city of Oshawa. Photo by Matthew Morgan QNet news.

By Matthew Morgan

BELLEVILLE – The head of the Quinte Economic Development Commission says he doesn’t think there will much of a direct impact on the Quinte region as a result of the closure of the GM plant in Oshawa.

“There might be some impact in Belleville but it won’t be as dramatic as you’ll see in Oshawa with the direct jobs and most of the employment directly in the Oshawa region,” said Chris King, the chief executive officer with the Quinte Economic Development Commission.

But he also added that there are probably a handful of folks who still commute to Oshawa from the area.

Some of the Oshawa assembly plant employees commute from outside that city.

The GM assembly plant in Oshawa will be closing down operations in December 2019 as part of a global restructuring announced by the company Monday morning.

The assembly plant is one of five major GM plants getting shut down in North America. This will cause a 15 per cent reduction in their salaried workers.

Loyalist College trains people in its Skills Centre to work on productions lines like GM.

Welding techniques, fabrication technician program coordinator John Grieve agrees that the impact locally won’t be that great.

“I don’t think it’s going to have too much of an affect on us because manufacturing (in Quinte) is so diversified that it would be very easy for these people to get into another sector of manufacturing,” he said.

King said that retention and maintaining stability for the manufacturers in this region is his primary focus.

Mike Hewitt, the coordinator of Manufacturing Resource Centre in Belleville, said when similar job-loss events have happened in the past in this region, the community has responded.

Belleville suffered a somewhat similar situation  back in Oct. 2017 when Sears shut down its distribution centre and retail store leaving more than 500 employees without work.

“We’ve (the centre) had some impact on the community. In each of those cases when there’s been a shut down especially when people have the support they need when moving into new jobs,” Hewitt said.

Nearly 3,000 workers will lose their jobs at GM in Oshawa.