COLUMN: Cleveland-Cliffs idles Hamilton’s lines in month 23 of a five-year commitment

A mural in Hamilton

Painted steelworkers

In a Canadian Press photo taken on February 10, 2025, a mural shows steelworkers at the Stelco plant in Hamilton, Ontario.

Painted steelworkers. Motionless. At their posts for good.

Hamilton is a steel town. The mural says so without a word.

A city that told its own story through steel put its workers on its walls. The real ones never needed paint to exist.

Monday, a memo

On Monday, September 28, an internal Stelco memo obtained by CBC News announced that the cold-rolling and coating lines at Hamilton Works would be idled indefinitely.

Men and women showed up for work that morning and learned the news on the spot, Ontario minister Vic Fedeli summed up, according to Global News.

A morning at the plant means coffee still hot and a time card already punched. The same everywhere.

The mural learned nothing. A mural does not punch in. It does not pay a mortgage.

Painted on a wall, steelworkers never get a memo.

October 9

Cold rolling, coating

The gradual wind-down will begin on October 9, according to the memo cited by CBC.

Stelco says the decision will affect up to 500 employees. Ron Wells, president of United Steelworkers Local 1005, estimates that 350 steelworkers will be laid off.

The union says it was told that about 500 production workers would be laid off, according to Global News. Wells believes the losses will be closer to 350.

Two numbers. The first comes from the company. The second, from the union. Neither is small.

Up to 500, or 350

Wells was briefed on Monday morning, in a meeting with management, he told CBC.

Now they have to find out who is being laid off, he says, and make sure it is done by seniority.

Seniority. The last right left when the plant stops: the order in which you leave.

The memo does not say for how long. It says indefinitely.

A departure date, October 9. No return date.

Indefinitely is a length of time lived without a calendar.

Three point four billion

November 2024

Cleveland-Cliffs, an Ohio steelmaker, bought Stelco for C$3.4 billion, in cash and stock. The deal closed in November 2024, CBC recalls.

A Hamilton name. A Cleveland owner.

The price: 3.4 billion. The consideration: commitments. People forget the second half quickly.

Alan Kestenbaum, then Stelco’s chief executive, wrote in the release at the time that the deal kept national interests at the forefront and recognized “the importance of the workforce.”

Kestenbaum’s words

The importance of the workforce.

The sentence is more than two years old. It was never withdrawn. It was overtaken by a memo.

You do not blame a seller for the buyer’s promises. You only reread what was signed, and by whom.

But there was more than press-release language. There was a government document.

National interests had an address. It was in Hamilton.

Five years, in writing

October 30, 2024

On October 30, 2024, then Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne approved the purchase under the Investment Canada Act.

Approval depended on binding undertakings lasting five years, according to his statement.

Cleveland-Cliffs undertook to run the business under the Stelco name. It undertook to keep the head office in Hamilton. It would keep employing at least the same number of unionized employees. It would honour the collective agreements and the pension plans. It would invest in the facilities.

A short list. A signature. Five years.

Even emissions got a number: at least 25% below the global average for integrated steel mills. Unionized workers got no number. Only “at least the same number.”

At least the same number

Five years promised, a shutdown announced in month 23.

So I stand with the 350 to 500 steelworkers of Hamilton. Against the September 28 memo that switches off their lines with no return date. Because Cleveland-Cliffs committed in writing, on October 30, 2024, and for five years, to keep at least as many unionized workers.

“We’re very disappointed,” Wells told CBC. When Cliffs bought them, he recalls, the company made commitments, including one to maintain the same number of unionized employees.

Not even halfway through the promise, and already a memo.

Survival, says the memo

Frederic Fafard

The company has its reasons. They deserve to be read in its own words.

The memo is signed by Frederic Fafard, vice-president of sales. It calls the move “unfortunate but necessary” to ensure Stelco’s survival.

The memo says the market for cold-rolled and galvanized products has contracted significantly. The memo says imports of these products remain high. The memo says federal measures have reduced imports into Canada without closing the gap.

Almost 25%

The memo also puts a number on the drop. In the second quarter of 2026, demand for these products in Stelco’s traditional markets fell by almost 25% against the 2024 quarterly average, the memo says, according to The Canadian Press.

The decision will not affect its ability to supply hot-rolled steel, the company tells CBC.

Total steel tonnage will not change, the company says. Production will be concentrated at Lake Erie Works, with more hot-rolled steel.

Jobs there will be offered to Hamilton employees, Cleveland-Cliffs spokesperson Pat Persico wrote. A significant number should be absorbed there, in his view.

It is the strongest argument. There would be no net loss. Only a move.

It stands up. It has numbers. It has a signature.

And yet the company itself counts up to 500 employees affected. Absorbed, affected: not the same verbs.

For a company, survival sometimes means moving the payroll.

July 23

Significant earnings in sight

We need to reread the summer.

On July 23, Cleveland-Cliffs released its second-quarter results. Its chairman, Lourenco Goncalves, wrote that the company was beginning to see “meaningful improvement in the Canadian market.”

That would put Stelco in a position to return to generating significant earnings, he added.

A little more than nine weeks later, the memo talks about survival.

Two messages, one summer

The same month, Goncalves warned that without further trade protections, the future competitiveness of the Hamilton galvanizing lines was at risk, CTV News reports.

To shareholders, an improvement. To Ottawa, a threat. Two audiences. Two tones.

The July release names neither Hamilton nor the galvanizing lines.

In August 2025, Ontario Premier Doug Ford had already accused the Cleveland-Cliffs chairman of repeatedly backing Trump’s tariffs, CTV News recalls.

Goncalves was asking the Canadian government to protect Canadian steel the way the American government had at home.

And yet both sentences come from the same mouth, in the same month. One reassures the market. The other looks, in hindsight, like advance notice.

Sunshine for shareholders, survival for the workers.

What Ottawa offered

Proposals turned down

The office of Industry Minister Mélanie Joly responded on Monday with a statement, cited by Global News.

Ottawa will use “every lever possible,” it says, to defend Canadian industry, protect jobs and secure the supply chain.

The government, it says, has made clear to the company for some time that it was ready to provide financial support to sustain operations and protect jobs.

The company rejected those proposals and is going ahead with the layoffs. A decision her office calls “extremely disappointing.”

Legal options

At Queen’s Park, seat of the Ontario government, a spokesperson for Vic Fedeli says they understand the federal government is reviewing its legal options to protect Stelco workers, according to CTV News.

Ontario, for its part, is ramping up services at its POWER Centre in Hamilton, whose funding was just raised by nearly 50%, and points to its $30 billion plan against tariffs.

Two levels of government. Two statements. Neither, in what the dispatches quote, names the 2024 undertaking. The legal options mentioned at Queen’s Park could still be tied to it.

Ontario is also pressing Ottawa to speed up its purchases of Ontario-made steel for pipelines, infrastructure, ships and defence, according to CTV News.

An offer refused is information. It suggests money was not the only problem.

I am not choosing between the two. I only note that aid offered and refused is not aid that was missing.

Refusing public money means choosing the memo.

Lake Erie Works

Nanticoke

Now here is what unsettles my reading. I am publishing it anyway.

Production is not going to Ohio. It is being concentrated at Lake Erie Works, in Nanticoke, Ontario, according to The Canadian Press. Tonnage stays the same, Stelco says.

This is no exodus south. It is a pullback inside the country. Nanticoke is not Hamilton. It is not Ohio either.

The union echoes the memo

Another awkward fact. On imports, the union and the company say almost the same thing.

Ottawa’s counter-tariffs and the quotas on foreign steel are not “strong enough,” Wells tells Global News. Fafard’s memo says nothing different.

True, and it does not change this: the 2024 undertaking was not about tonnage. It was about the number of unionized workers.

How many of them will Lake Erie really absorb?

The mural stays in Hamilton. It does not move to Nanticoke.

Tonnage moves easily. A life, less so.

Christmas ain’t that far away

Seniority first

“Christmas ain’t that far away,” Wells told CBC. And no one, he adds, has any idea how long these layoffs will last.

People are worried, he adds. He does not blame them.

First he wants to know who goes. Then he wants to know for how long. For now, he has neither answer.

The blow is enormous, he also tells Global News.

An unknown length

There is the man with 20 years of seniority who will stay. There is the one with three who will go first. There is the woman who will drive all the way to Nanticoke, if she is offered the job, and will count the gas money.

There is the house bought near the plant, because the plant was there.

A rolling line that stops makes no noise as it stops. It is the silence afterward that you hear.

The steelworkers on the mural will keep their place. Those on the cold-rolling line are waiting for a list.

Three hundred and fifty.

Christmas is counted in paycheques, and these have no date.

The 50% duties

Section 232

We have to go back to the root cause, and name it.

Washington imposes duties of up to 50% on Canadian steel under Section 232, Global News recalls. Aluminum and autos are hit too.

Stelco cites a “very low” price for coated products because of those duties, Wells reports. The company is telling them it cannot make money in these conditions, he sums up.

The same Monday, Iowa

That same Monday, in the Oval Office, Trump touted a US$15 billion steel plant project in Iowa as proof that his tariffs work, according to CBC.

The price of coated products is low. American duties close the south. Imports press on the north. The company holds all three threads.

In Washington, an announcement. In Hamilton, a memo.

A tariff is paid at the border. A layoff is paid at home.

Cleveland-Cliffs’ decision does not erase Washington’s. It adds to it.

Two signatures, and only one city to pay for both.

Algoma, ArcelorMittal, Stelco

June 2025

Hamilton has seen this move before.

In June 2025, ArcelorMittal Long Products Canada closed its wire-drawing mill in Hamilton. 153 workers affected, The Canadian Press recalls.

In December 2025, Algoma Steel cut more than 1,000 jobs, according to the same dispatch.

September 2026

Each time, a tariff is cited. Each time, a line goes dark. Each time, a steel town counts who leaves.

And each time, the list grows by one familiar name. June, December, September. Three seasons, three announcements.

Stelco, this time. The name of the plant with the mural.

This time, though, there is a written undertaking. That is the only difference. It is not a small one.

Three names, three announcements, one steel town.

Kevon Stewart’s phone

District 6

Kevon Stewart heads United Steelworkers District 6. His phone has been lighting up, he tells CBC. Worried Canadian workers are calling him.

“Everything is timing right now,” he says.

This is not only a wake-up call, he adds. The call for action was already there.

The waiting period

He wants a plan that protects workers. Better benefits, for example. Or an end to the waiting period before Employment Insurance benefits kick in.

These are specific demands. They have a cost. They also have an addressee.

He is not asking for a cheque for the company. He is asking for a safety net for people.

Stewart gives no number. He gives urgency.

A week without pay, in a steelworker’s house, is no abstraction. It is a grocery run pushed back.

And yet Stewart’s demand does not target the company. It targets the state, which will pick up the bill for a corporate decision.

When the employer walks away, the public keeps the bill.

What an undertaking is worth

A responsibility, said Champagne

In 2024, Champagne justified his conditions with a simple sentence. The Government of Canada has a responsibility to ensure that the largest foreign investments benefit Canadians.

An undertaking is signed. An undertaking is published. An undertaking is verified.

The first two verbs were carried out in 2024. The third is still waiting.

Five years, in an undertaking to the state, is not an intention. It is a term.

Who counts the union members

The 2024 statement puts no figure on the number of unionized employees promised. It says: at least the same number.

The same as when? Counted where? Published by whom?

I admit I do not know what a five-year undertaking is worth. I thought I knew in 2024. I read it differently this morning.

An undertaking nobody counts in public…

Promising a number without publishing it is promising a shadow.

Thirty-seven months to go

Fall 2029

Five years is 60 months. Twenty-three have passed. Thirty-seven remain before the 2024 undertakings run out.

Until then, Cleveland-Cliffs must employ at least the same number of union members, according to the minister’s text. In Hamilton, in Nanticoke, somewhere in Canada.

Thirty-seven months. Three winters. Three Christmases.

The memo says indefinitely. The undertaking says five years. One of those words will have to give.

On October 9, the first line will slow down.

The public count

Will Ottawa publish, job by job, the count of union members Cleveland-Cliffs promised to keep?

The mural will not keep that count. It will show the same arms, in the same paint, whether they are called back or not.

It will take another wall. A table, with numbers.

Twenty-three months gone. Thirty-seven still to keep.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada — Cleveland-Cliffs’ five-year undertakings for Stelco, October 30, 2024
• Cleveland-Cliffs — second-quarter results and an improving Canadian market, July 23, 2026
• The Canadian Press — Stelco idles Hamilton and shifts production to Lake Erie, September 28, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CBC News — Stelco’s internal memo, up to 500 employees affected from October 9, September 28, 2026
• Global News — 350 layoffs by the union’s count, federal offers rejected, September 28, 2026
• BNN Bloomberg (CTV News) — Stelco, Queen’s Park and Goncalves’s warning, September 28, 2026