Sale of Brampton auto plant from Stellantis to Roshel leaves laid-off workers in the lurch

Detailed summary

Unifor chairperson says news has devastated employees, 3,000 of whom were sent home when Stellantis idled the plant in 2023

Ardis Snow stands on the windswept sidewalk in Brampton, Ont., outside the Stellantis NV STLA-N auto plant and points to the weeds poking through the cracks in the employee parking lot, empty since late 2023.

That’s when the automaker idled the plant and sent almost 3,000 employees home to wait out a retooling that was expected to take 22 months.

Almost three years later, nothing has changed, and everything has changed.

The assembly line remains silent and the workers are still on layoff. But Stellantis has shifted production of the vehicle planned for the plant to Illinois and sold the plant to a defence contractor, ending 40 years of automaking at the factory northwest of Toronto.

Mr. Snow, a 38-year Stellantis employee and the plant’s Unifor chairperson, said the news was devastating for the workers who have been waiting to return to their jobs. They face financial hardship and mental-health challenges and, in some cases, have sold their houses and moved.

“They just want to come back to work,” Mr. Snow said at a coffee shop near the plant.

Stellantis, maker of Chrysler, Ram, Fiat and several other brands, closed the plant in late 2023 to retool the assembly line for the Jeep Compass. But after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of 25-per-cent on Canadian-made cars in 2025, Stellantis halted the work before moving the Jeep Compass, to Belvidere, Ill.

The sale of the plant to Roshel Inc., announced this week, angered the union and federal politicians, who said the carmaker violated terms of the agreement that gave the company taxpayer money to work on the plant.

Stellantis said this week it has offered to return the undisclosed amount of money. Stellantis’s global operations are struggling to make a profit amid weak sales, a move away from EVs and overcapacity at its manufacturing sites.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Globe and Mail (Report on Business). To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.