An employee works on the assembly line at Stellantis's assembly plant in Brampton, Ont., in 2023. Contract negotiations between the automaker and Unifor stalled last month over plans to sell the idled facility.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
Unifor’s Stellantis STLA-N workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike, empowering the union to call a work stoppage amid contract talks that have hit an impasse over the automaker’s plans to close and sell its plant in Brampton, Ont.
The automaker and the union began collective bargaining in August, but Unifor walked away from the table on Sept. 11 after Stellantis confirmed it has a preliminary agreement to sell its idled Brampton plant to Roshel, a maker of armoured vehicles.
There have been no formal talks since then.
Unifor, which represents 9,000 Stellantis workers in Canada, said on Monday than 97 per cent of votes cast were for a strike. “While we now have a mandate, that does not automatically mean a strike will occur,” Unifor said in a statement, adding the union is not in a legal strike position.
A work stoppage would include the company’s Windsor plant, which makes minivans and Dodge muscle cars, and the casting plant in Toronto.
As of Monday, more than 6,400 workers at the Windsor plant are on a layoff for three weeks. Stellantis blames the layoffs, which also happened for a two-week shutdown in September, on tariffs and sales.
“Stellantis continues to evaluate and adjust its manufacturing operations in response to evolving market conditions, including consumer demand and the impact of tariffs,” said LouAnn Gosselin, a spokeswoman for Stellantis.
Unifor is pushing Stellantis to reverse plans to sell the Brampton plant. The company shifted planned production of the Jeep Compass to Belvidere, Ill., after the U.S. announced 25-per-cent tariffs on Canadian-made cars last year. The factory northwest of Toronto employed more than 3,000 people when it closed for retooling in 2023, and has about 2,200 people on layoff.
In addition to a return of the Brampton plant, the union is seeking production and employment security at the Windsor and Toronto plants. Unifor is pushing Stellantis to accept the wage package won in summer negotiations with Ford and General Motors.
Canadian workers at the other Detroit-based automakers approved three-year contracts that provide 3-per-cent raises in each year of the deal. Over the life of the new agreements, senior hourly wages rise to about $50.50 for production workers and about $62.70 for skilled tradespeople.