‘Sad, devastated and angry’: Stellantis workers fear for their future after Ontario plant sale announcement

Detailed summary

News that Stellantis has agreed to sell its Brampton, Ont., assembly plant to Canadian armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel has some workers feeling betrayed and questioning their family’s future.

As Joshua Taylor watches his seven-year-old daughter and three-year-old son play at a Brampton, Ont., playground not far from their home, he says a wave of emotion comes over him -- thinking about the sacrifices he’s made for his employer, Stellantis, over the years, and how that job might now be gone for good.

“I sacrificed, we sacrificed,” he said through tears, recalling working through the pandemic as an “essential” worker and having to keep his distance from his children. “I had to say hi to my kids through a door.”

His wife, Samantha Lafave, also a Stellantis employee, has been sitting idle alongside her husband – just like the plant where they worked for nearly three years.

But this week, news that Stellantis has agreed to sell the Brampton assembly plant to Canadian armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel left the couple feeling betrayed and questioning their family’s future.

“It was just like everything came crashing down and you were filled with fear and loss and heartbreak,” Lafave told CTV News. She said the feelings stem from realizing they might lose “the future that we have (spent) the last eight years of our life building and looking forward to.”

The Brampton plant stopped production in December 2023 for what was supposed to be a temporary shutdown to retool the facility, but Stellantis ultimately moved its planned Jeep Compass production to Illinois amid a tariff dispute with the United States.

On Monday, the automaker announced it had signed an agreement to sell the facility to Roshel, leaving more than 2,000 laid-off workers in limbo.

“We feel (a sense of) betrayal. We feel sad, devastated and angry,” Taylor said of the past year. “Progressively more and more angry.”

Both Stellantis and Roshel have told CTV News the sale would breathe new life into the idled facility, creating jobs for Canadian workers.

Opening of the article, excerpted from BNN Bloomberg. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.