Charitable agencies in Durham bracing for fallout
Once the smoke clears, the ripple effect of General Motors pulling out of Oshawa will reverberate across the region — with ebbing donations to community agencies like the United Way in Durham mirroring GM’s ongoing decline.
Agencies across Durham Region are already dreading the worst about the impact the plant’s shutdown will have on the ability of the automaker and its employees to support numerous commitments.
The shutdown, expected by December 2019, presents a host of challenges for the United Way, which has previously had to remodel its campaign after GM’s corporate and employee donations were slashed significantly over the past decade.
Roughly10 years ago, the company’s employee and corporate donations accounted for 58 per cent of the United Way’s approximately $3.5-million annual campaign, said Robert Howard, the Durham agency’s vicepresident of external relations.
“Last year they were in the vicinity of about $600,000,” he said.
Two-dozen social service organizations in Durham depend on the agency’s financial support.
While donations from GM are facing an uncertain fate, so, too, are the workplace campaigns at a handful of feeder plants that provide various services to the automaker.
“As GM shrunk, each of them shrunk or disappeared entirely,” Howard said. “In the vicinity of two-thirds of our campaign was a derivative of employment in the automobile industry.”
Monday’s announcement “is going to have a devastating impact,” he added.
It’s been a juggling act to find new revenue streams to fill the void left by GM’s ongoing contraction. A working group led by the United Way has been formed to address declining revenue — and leading the agenda is GM’s falling support.
Howard said the departure of GM from Oshawa will definitely mean fewer dollars to fuel poverty-abatement initiatives.
GM says it has about 2,600 hourly workers and about 300 contract and salary employees in Oshawa.