The fight over Canadian steelworker jobs

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada – Chelsey Masteij had heard layoffs might be coming at Stelco, so she decided to use up some of her vacation days. She was making the most of the time off with her new dog when she got a call telling her not to come back to work.

The ۳۴-year-old had spent years trying to break into the male-dominated steel industry before finally landing a job at the company’s Hamilton plant about three years ago.

Recommended Stories

list of ۴ itemsend of list

She started as a general labourer in the cold-rolling department, later training to operate cranes and taking on shifts in the coke ovens.

The work was gruelling and physically demanding, but Masteij grew to love the routine and the close-knit community of coworkers she came to consider family. When she shared photos of herself with Al Jazeera, all in protective gear at the plant, she joked that she hardly had any pictures outside of work.

Masteij thought she might stay at Stelco until retirement. Instead, she was laid off on October ۹.

The news hit hard, and she spent much of the next two weeks sleeping.

“I was in a complete mess,” she told Al Jazeera, her voice cracking as she recalled the experience. “I was kind of depressed.”

Now, instead of working ۱۲-hour shifts, Masteij spends much of her time at home, cutting back on expenses while she collects employment insurance.

Masteij is among hundreds of Canadian steelworkers facing layoffs after Stelco’s American owner, Cleveland-Cliffs, announced in late September that it would temporarily shut down parts of its operations in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario.

Stelco blames the move on United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which it says have made it harder to sell Canadian steel to US customers, and on competition from cheaper foreign steel entering Canada.

But government officials and plant workers, including Masteij, are not convinced that is the whole story.

“Right now, there are a lot of lies going on with what’s happened,” Masteij said.

While US tariffs have hurt the Canadian steel industry, the union representing Stelco workers questions whether Cleveland-Cliffs is using difficult market conditions to serve its own business interests, with Canadian workers paying the price.

“Everyone knows we’re being used as pawns, that these layoffs weren’t necessary,” said Ron Wells, president of United Steelworkers Local ۱۰۰۵, speaking to Al Jazeera at his Hamilton office.

The pressures facing Stelco

In June ۲۰۲۵, Trump doubled tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, including from Canada, to ۵۰ percent, making them more expensive for US buyers.

According to Stelco, Canada’s exports of cold-rolled and coated steel to the US – used to make everything from cars to building materials – fell by ۵۸ percent in the second quarter of ۲۰۲۶ compared with the quarterly average before the trade war.

But demand has also fallen in Canada, where the auto industry, a major buyer of the cold-rolled steel produced at the Hamilton plant, has also been hit hard by Trump’s tariffs, said Colin Mang, an assistant professor of economics at McMaster University in Hamilton.

“When they say that there is less demand for the product coming out of the Hamilton mill, that is correct,” Mang told Al Jazeera.

But it is not just Trump’s tariffs that Cleveland-Cliffs blames for Stelco’s problems.

During a July earnings call, CEO Lourenco Goncalves warned that the company might scale back production in Canada unless Ottawa did more to protect its steel industry from imports.

“And that will have consequences for employment in Canada, but will have a positive financial impact on Stelco and on Cleveland-Cliffs,” he said.

That was the first time Wells had heard jobs might be at risk. The union later offered to help Cleveland-Cliffs lobby Ottawa for stronger protections against foreign steel imports, believing Canadian workers might have more sway with the government.

“They never took us up on our offer,” Wells said.

Instead, the next call brought news of the layoffs.

As of Saturday, ۱۷۵ workers at Stelco’s Hamilton plant had received layoff notices, with the announced cuts expected to affect up to ۵۰۰ workers there and in Nanticoke.

Late last month, about ۳۰ attended an information session the union organised in Hamilton, where they could learn about employment insurance and retraining opportunities.

Many were frustrated by the lack of clarity about how long the shutdown would last.

Some asked how their benefits would compare to their wages, while others wondered whether they would qualify for the full amount.

For workers who had spent decades at Stelco, another daunting prospect loomed: having to look for work for the first time in the digital era, competing for jobs with younger applicants as they neared retirement.

Some are already considering heading out west to find work.

“It’s hard for them to make those decisions,” Wells said, describing what he had been hearing from members. “Do I leave my family, go out west, make some money? Because they don’t know how long this is going to be.”

Masteij worries about what that could mean for Hamilton, a city where generations of families have worked in steelmaking, an industry that has shaped its identity for more than a century.

“I’m a steel city girl, and I can’t imagine the city without steel manufacturing,” she said. “We are losing tradesmen.”

Were the layoffs necessary?

But as workers grapple with what the layoffs mean for their families and their city, the union has been asking another question: whether these layoffs needed to happen at all – and it is not alone.

The US company has come under fire from the Canadian government, which is threatening legal action, accusing it of breaking promises it made when it bought Stelco in ۲۰۲۴.

Those included keeping at least the same number of unionised jobs and most non-unionised jobs in Canada, and pushing for trade policies that would benefit the steel industries in both Canada and the US.

Cleveland-Cliffs denies violating the agreement, saying it expects to meet its employment commitments for the year. It also maintains the layoffs are needed to “ensure the survival of Stelco” amid US tariffs, weaker demand and competition from cheaper foreign steel.

But the union and the government point to Stelco’s recent financial performance. Earlier this month, Goncalves reported the company’s strongest quarter since the acquisition.

“Mr Goncalves is not a victim,” Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly told Canada’s public broadcaster CBC, pointing to the company’s earnings. “He’s never made so much money.”

Experts have also challenged Goncalves’s claim that Canadian steelmakers are struggling because of “an avalanche of imports”.

Mang points out that nearly ۸۰ percent of Canada’s cold-rolled steel imports come from the US, as does about half of the galvanised and painted steel coming into the country.

“What he’s trying to sell people on is the idea that there’s all this European or Asian steel coming into Canada,” he said. “This stuff is coming from his own country.”

The union and the government have also asked why, as Goncalves pushes for stronger protections in Canada against foreign steel, he has also been a vocal supporter of Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel.

In testimony to US lawmakers in January, Goncalves argued that no country, including Canada, should be exempted from the steel tariffs. In an interview with Politico last year, he said he was “very happy” with the ۵۰ percent tariffs on steel imports, adding, “I have my fingerprints on that ۵۰ percent.”

Two countries, one company

For Wells, the irony is that Goncalves helped create the same conditions Cleveland-Cliffs now blames for the layoffs. He believes the company is using Canadian workers to pressure Ottawa to impose more restrictions on foreign steel, while also helping Trump argue that his tariffs are working.

Mang explained why Goncalves’ seemingly contradictory position might make sense for Cleveland-Cliffs.

“He wants trade barriers in both countries to seal off their domestic markets from each other and also from the rest of the world,” Mang said, “so that his companies in each country can benefit in their own domestic markets.”

Cleveland-Cliffs has been under growing pressure from Ottawa, which gave the company ۱۵ days from October ۲۲ to honour its commitments to Canadian workers or face legal action.

Amid that pressure, comments Goncalves made to CBC late last month appeared to support the union’s suspicions that the layoffs have less to do with tough market conditions and more to do with Cleveland-Cliffs’ broader business interests.

Asked why he supported tariffs on Canadian steel despite promises to protect workers and advocate for the Canadian steel industry when Cleveland-Cliffs bought Stelco, he said: “I bought Stelco because I could not afford anymore having Stelco flooding the market here in the United States to the detriment of my own company.”

The admission caught the attention of Joly, who said the comments could strengthen the government’s case against Cleveland-Cliffs if Goncalves meant that he had bought Stelco to keep its Canadian operations idle. She added that Ottawa could force the company to sell its Canadian assets.

On November ۶, as Ottawa’s ۱۵-day deadline expired, Joly asked Canada’s Competition Bureau to investigate the ۲۰۲۴ acquisition and whether the company’s conduct violated Canadian competition law.

“If negotiations and acquisition were conducted in bad faith, Canadians deserve to know. The company needs to face the consequences,” she said in a statement.

Cleveland-Cliffs maintains that it has complied with its obligations under the Investment Canada Act.

Goncalves has rejected the prospect of a forced sale but suggested he might sell Stelco himself in a year.

“I will sell the company after we operate the company for a while, and now that I know that I’m persona non grata in Canada, I will do that,” he told CBC.

In a statement to The Canadian Press news agency late last month, he said he hoped to bring laid-off workers back before Christmas.

“It will depend on Canadian customers buying Canadian steel, made by Stelco,” he said.

Al Jazeera contacted Cleveland-Cliffs for comment on the union’s allegations and Goncalves’s remarks.

What comes next for workers?

For Masteij, even as she waits to hear whether she will be recalled, she is preparing for the possibility that her time at Stelco is done. Her low seniority means she would be one of the last to be called back.

Masteij plans to use the time she is eligible for employment insurance to take a heavy equipment training programme, hoping it will open the door to other opportunities and give her something to focus on. The training could also help her if she returns to Stelco, which is still what she is hoping for.

For Wells, what is especially frustrating is how the company is treating workers, given the years of hard work and sacrifices many have made in their jobs.

“It’s not glamorous. You work shifts, nights, days, in the hot and the cold,” he said. “Our members miss Christmas meals with their families or their kids’ hockey games because they’re expected to work.”

“And that’s why this is particularly tough because that loyalty isn’t being repaid,” Wells added. “It’s actually being exploited, if anything.”

He worries about what a drawn-out legal battle could mean for those workers.

“Our members don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “We’re hoping things get settled as soon as possible.”