PROFILE: Lana Payne lets the contract expire rather than sign away Brampton

Twenty-two hundred missing

A binder, September 1

On September 20 at 11:59 p.m., the collective agreement between Unifor and Stellantis expired. Not one of the laid-off workers from the Brampton plant had gone back to the line.

There are about 2,200 of them, according to Unifor. Laid off since December 2023. Nearly thirty-three months.

On September 1, in Toronto, a Canadian Press photo published by CBC shows two pairs of hands on a bargaining binder. Those of Trevor Longley, president of Stellantis Canada. Those of Lana Payne.

People are missing from that photo. A lot of people.

The photo is from the first day. The contract will end without them.

A line gone still

The plant shut down to be retooled. It was supposed to build the electric Jeep Compass, Unifor wrote on August 14.

A stopped line keeps its smell of oil for a while. Then silence takes over. The lockers stay shut. Names on them.

Lana Payne, Unifor’s national president, is bargaining for them. They are not at the table. She seats them there anyway.

That is her move. It comes down to one condition.

Absent from the plant, present in every line of the talks.

A former journalist

Three decades in the labor movement

Her official bio, on Unifor’s website, opens with a fact. First woman elected national president of the union.

She was a journalist. She was Unifor’s Atlantic regional director. She was national secretary-treasurer. She was president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour.

More than three decades defending workers, the same bio says. A career in writing, then at the table.

2022, then 2025

Elected in 2022. Re-elected in 2025, in Vancouver, by a wide margin, according to Unifor.

She led the campaign for the federal anti-scab law. It passed in 2024.

The Hill Times named her in 2026 among the hundred most influential people in government and politics, according to her bio.

She also sits on the federal advisory council on Canada–US economic relations.

A written question leaves a trace. So does a dated answer.

Remember that detail. It will come back.

A journalist learns to put her questions in writing.

Ford, GM, then Stellantis

The pattern of three

Unifor bargains with the three Detroit automakers, one after another. The first deal sets the pattern. The other two follow.

Ford ratified its deal on July 19. General Motors, on August 30, according to Unifor’s news feed.

At GM, the contract commits the automaker to keeping its CAMI plant in Ingersoll open, the Detroit Free Press reports. Despite the same tariff pressure.

The Ford pattern included investment and stability for the plants, Payne told the Windsor Star. GM matched it. Two automakers, two commitments.

The last and the hardest

Stellantis comes last. The contract covers more than 9,000 workers in Canada.

On September 1, Payne sets the tone. Stellantis must never take its members for granted. Nor its union. Nor this country.

She expects, according to the Windsor Star, the union’s most difficult round yet, “possibly ever.”

At the core of this negotiation, she says the same day, is job security. And “holding our ground today.”

Two deals signed, and the third carries all the weight.

The Compass that left for Illinois

A robocall

The record starts in December 2023. The plant shuts down. It waits for a Jeep.

In February 2025, Stellantis paused the retooling, Unifor recalls. In October 2025, production of the next Compass moved to the United States. To Illinois, The Pointer specifies.

Thousands of Brampton workers learned it through a robocall, the same paper reports. A recorded voice. Not a face.

The automaker cited, among other things, American tariffs, CBC writes.

A notice of default in December

For Unifor, the move breaches the collective agreement. It also breaches the agreements tied to public funding, federal and provincial.

In December 2025, Ottawa served Stellantis with a notice of default, according to Payne’s letter to the industry minister.

On September 21, the government detailed its payments for MP Amarjeet Gill, The Pointer reports. C$18.6 million in 2022–23. C$85.9 million in 2023–24. C$117.8 million in 2024–25.

The MP also asked how Ottawa monitors Stellantis’s commitment to keep 4,475 full-time-equivalent positions in the country. On March 24, he had raised the file in the House of Commons.

A promise of investment. An empty plant. Public money already paid out.

Canada paid. The Jeep left.

Three public payments, then a robocall.

August 12, a sale

No written notice

On August 12, Stellantis told Unifor it was in talks with another company about a possible sale of the plant, according to the union.

No written notice of closure was given, Unifor says. The agreement requires a year’s notice. At least.

A year’s notice required. No written notice received, as of August 14.

And yet, according to Vito Beato, president of Local 1285, Trevor Longley had told him something simple, The Pointer reports. If the plant were going to close, it would already have closed.

On September 11, the automaker confirmed a memorandum of understanding with Roshel. An armored vehicle maker. Based in Brampton.

A punch

At the start of the talks, Payne had called it a punch, The Pointer reports. She doubted the buyer would be an automaker.

Roshel has no unionized workforce, the paper notes.

As early as August 14, Unifor called the proposed sale a grave development. Nothing replaces, the union wrote, the union jobs built over 80 years of auto contracts.

In December 2023, a line stops for a Jeep. In September 2026, it is offered to an armored vehicle maker.

While the talks went on, the sale moved ahead.

Ten days in Toronto

September 1 to 11

Ten days of intensive bargaining in Toronto, CBC reports. Then, on September 11, the impasse. Formal talks stop.

The heart of the deadlock, according to Unifor: Brampton.

The union adds that Stellantis has not confirmed its production plans for the Windsor plant. Nor for the Etobicoke casting plant.

The union’s position was known from day one, CBC recalls. No settlement without a solution for Brampton’s members.

A pattern with strings attached

Stellantis will accept the economic pattern negotiated at Ford and GM on one condition only, according to Unifor. Closing Brampton.

On September 11, Stellantis Canada spokesperson Lou Ann Gosselin described Roshel as “a strong path,” the Detroit Free Press quotes. A way to restart the site. To avoid a long period of inactivity.

On the first day, Trevor Longley said in a written statement that Stellantis’s investments in the country “reflect our confidence in Canada.” More than $8 billion since 2022, by his count, the Windsor Star reports.

Two sentences. Two uses for the same plant. One union to say no.

Ready to sign, the pattern stalls on Brampton.

The signature withheld

Windsor, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Red Deer

On September 24, Unifor described the knot in an update signed by Lana Payne.

Stellantis keeps telling the union that the pattern for Windsor, Etobicoke, Mississauga and Red Deer depends on a closure agreement in Brampton. The union calls that condition unacceptable.

In other words, according to Unifor, one signature would have settled the fate of the other sites.

More than 9,000 workers. One knot.

Payne is not signing.

Thirty-three months against a contract

She could have. The bargaining sub-tables were nearly done, the same update says.

She could have signed. Filed thirty-three months of shutdown away in a clause. Turned the page.

I’ll admit it: I don’t know whether this refusal will save the plant. Nobody knows. I only know what a signature would have closed.

Stellantis is one hundred percent serious about leaving Brampton, Payne said on September 17, according to The Pointer. For now, it is their only plan.

Without her signature, the closure remains a proposal.

A letter to Mélanie Joly

Five questions, September 16

On September 16, Payne wrote to Industry Minister Mélanie Joly.

The letter asks whether Ottawa sees the sale as a resolution of the dispute. The letter asks whether Roshel lobbyists, received at the department in August, discussed the plant. The letter asks whether the government is a party to the memorandum of understanding.

The idea that Canada would concede one of its remaining assembly plants, she writes, is “unfathomable.”

The letter speaks of a “disaster-scenario” for the industry. It asks for a timely response. It offers a meeting.

An adviser asking questions

The detail flagged earlier comes back here. Payne sits on the federal advisory council on relations with Washington. She is questioning, in writing, the government she advises.

On September 24, Unifor reported the answer. According to the union, officials from the department and the Prime Minister’s Office told her Ottawa had neither prompted nor supported the sale.

To the Detroit Free Press, the department said Ottawa will keep using the tools available to protect workers and preserve Brampton’s manufacturing role. Any transaction will have to respect Stellantis’s commitments, added its spokesperson, Riyadh Nazerally.

On September 16, Mélanie Joly had said she wanted a new model for Brampton, The Pointer reports. She promised maximum pressure. Failing that, Ottawa would get its money back.

Payne answers that a refund settles nothing. Unless it keeps the plant open.

She advises Ottawa, and holds it to account in writing.

One minute to midnight

No legal strike

The agreement expired on September 20 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, according to CBC.

Unifor is not in a legal strike position. Union and automaker remain in conciliation. It is a mandatory step under Ontario labor law.

The terms of the old agreement stay in force. No strike vote is scheduled.

A safety net for Brampton

On September 16, the union and the automaker had extended income security for Brampton’s laid-off workers, according to Unifor. Until a legal strike position, or until a new contract.

Strike action “remains a real possibility,” Payne said on September 17, according to the Detroit Free Press. A last resort, Unifor specified on the 24th.

An expired agreement. Terms maintained. A strike possible. And not voted on.

Windsor News Today summed it up on September 25: the terms of the old contract remain. Nothing more. Nothing less.

One minute to midnight, and nothing stops or restarts.

The Toronto hotel

The committee goes back to work

On September 24, Unifor wrote that the impasse had limited exchanges with the company.

Many members of the bargaining committee have gone back to work. They are no longer staying at the hotel in Toronto.

The economic review committee stayed. No formal meeting is scheduled. The lines remain open.

A hotel empties. A negotiation stays.

A suitcase, a hallway

We know these bargaining hotels. The suitcase zipped shut. The hallway where you wait for a call. The lukewarm coffee in a meeting room.

This week, Payne says she spoke with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, AM800 reports. Then with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. Then with the federal industry department.

These are very difficult times for all of us, the update says. The trade war waged by the United States has upended the entire North American auto industry.

The union says it is answering its members’ emails and questions.

Three calls. No meeting with Stellantis.

Everyone goes home, and the table stays set.

Roshel and its 2,000 jobs

The most serious offer

The other side’s argument has to be heard. It is serious.

Naresh Raghubeer, Roshel’s co-founder, laid it out for The Pointer. A defense manufacturing center of excellence, in Brampton. Jobs offered first to the laid-off workers. More than 2,000 jobs targeted, through the federal light utility vehicle program.

Against a plant empty for nearly three years, the argument carries weight. A lot of weight.

Roshel is counting on a federal procurement program. So the customer would be, in part, Ottawa.

Local 1285, for its part, refuses to let a third party decide the plant’s future, the same paper reports.

Two or three vehicles a day

Payne answers that auto jobs are more secure. Defense jobs depend on government contracts, she says, according to the Detroit Free Press.

According to Carscoops, citing the Wall Street Journal, Roshel could build two or three vehicles a day there. Under Stellantis, the plant turned out 500 to 1,000.

And yet two thousand promised jobs beat none. For people waiting since 2023, that is concrete.

Two thousand jobs announced. Two or three vehicles estimated.

The supply chain lives on volume.

A buyer beats an empty plant, except for the supply chain.

Trump at the end of the line

Fifty percent on January 1

This whole file has a date on the horizon.

Donald Trump says he wants to impose, from January 1, 2027, tariffs of 50% on Canadian cars, trucks, parts and steel, the Windsor Star reports.

A 25% tariff already hits Canadian-made cars entering the United States, the same paper writes.

Larry Savage, a professor at Brock University, sees a union fighting on two fronts, CBC reported. At the table with Stellantis. In Ottawa, on trade policy.

A win handed over

Payne said it bluntly. If the sale goes through, Brampton would be “the first auto plant to fall in this trade war,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

Payne also told AM800 that losing a plant now would hand Donald Trump a win.

And yet she says she understands, according to the Free Press, the pressure the automaker faces to avoid costly tariffs. All she is asking for is time.

“Don’t close, don’t sell.” Keep the plant as a bridge to future production.

A tariff is negotiated between countries. A plant is sold between companies. The union took no part in the talks between Stellantis and Roshel, Payne said, as quoted by The Pointer.

Washington sets the tariff, Stellantis chooses the closure.

Two measured refusals

What she did not do

Payne has to be judged on her actions. Not on her lines.

She did not sign a pattern conditional on closure. She did not call a strike outside the legal framework. She did not set a strike date. She did not accept a refund as a solution. She did not stop writing to the government.

Each of those acts is dated. None is a shout.

On September 24, the committee wrote that a strike is called only when it strategically serves the members. Not before.

No strike vote is scheduled. The word stays on the table. The date does not.

What the refusals cost

Every refusal has a price. About 6,000 Stellantis employees work outside Brampton, according to the Detroit Free Press. Their contract is waiting too.

A union that holds back a signature for an empty plant asks a lot. Its working members wait for those who no longer work.

What will the others do if the wait drags on?

Holding back a signature makes your own people wait.

An empty plant as a condition

A promise, publicly funded

Here is where I stand. On her actions.

By refusing to sign the closure, Lana Payne turns an industrial promise into a contract condition. It is the right act. It is a risky one.

Stellantis had committed to keeping its “full Canadian production footprint,” Payne writes to the minister. Ottawa funded it.

She is not asking for a favor. She is asking for a promise to be kept.

On September 20, she let a date go by rather than a plant.

A promise no signature defends ends up as a footnote.

A country is also judged by what it lets close.

Thirty-three months, and what comes next

If the sale goes through…

Who will decide what gets sold, in a plant our taxes helped promise?

Brampton is counting its months. The contract stopped counting on September 20.

Contract expired, closure unsigned: Brampton waits.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Unifor — update on the Stellantis negotiations, September 24, 2026
• Unifor — Lana Payne’s letter to Minister Mélanie Joly, September 16, 2026
• Unifor — opening of the Stellantis negotiations, September 1, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Pointer — Unifor, Roshel and the questions for Ottawa, September 23, 2026
• Detroit Free Press — a strike weighed to block the sale, September 17, 2026
• Windsor Star — Stellantis, Unifor and the 50% threat, September 2, 2026