Sarah-Jane Shaw entered the Goodwill Career Centre in a suburban Hamilton strip mall with three resumes in hand.
The documents were out-of-date, written during a 2010 lockout at what is now Stelco’s Hamilton Works. Shaw, 61, was ready for a job hunt after being laid off from her work on a galvanizing line at the plant earlier this month.
But now, Shaw says she is in a “holding pattern.”
“You can’t plan for a future in any way, shape or form,” she said. “A lot of employers won’t touch us because we are Stelco, and they go, ‘Well, as soon as you get called back, you’re gone,’” she said. “So we’re all in a very precarious situation.”
The head of Stelco’s parent company, Cleveland-Cliffs, said Wednesday laid-off workers could be back on the job by Christmas, if domestic purchases of Canadian steel rise.
A day later, federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said she would meet with the Cleveland-Cliffs head only if layoffs are “immediately” undone first.
Meanwhile, Stelco’s workers are stuck in limbo, uncertain whether or when they could be called back to the plant, and how they will pay bills and support their families in the meantime.
Owner blames tariffs, foreign steel
A month ago, Stelco said it would idle the cold mill and coating lines at Hamilton Works and lay off up to 500 workers. The move sparked a political outcry.
Union leaders and the Canadian government have accused U.S.-based Cleveland-Cliffs of breaking its promise to keep unionized employment levels at Stelco stable for five years after its 2024 takeover of the company. The federal government has threatened to sue the company and has warned it may force it to sell its Canadian operations if the job cuts continue.
In return, Cleveland-Cliffs has pointed the finger at U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel, which the company’s chief executive officer, Lourenco Goncalves, has repeatedly applauded. Goncalves also blames the job cuts on the Canadian government for not doing enough to restrict imports of cheaper foreign steel.
Stelco will have to rely on itself and its own customers to restore sales and bring back jobs, Goncalves said in a statement to The Canadian Press on Wednesday.
“It will depend on Canadian customers buying Canadian steel, made by Stelco,” he said.
The layoffs are only a temporary measure, Goncalves told the Hamilton Spectator last week. “I did what I had to do because I’m a responsible owner.”
But that’s not how some in Hamilton see it.
In a union office filled with mementos of the 116-year-old steel company’s storied past, United Steelworkers Local 1005 president Ron Wells has been on the phone a lot lately.
Since the beginning of October, 175 workers have been laid off.
They are worried, he said, asking if the layoffs will be reversed and wondering why junior employees in other departments are keeping their jobs.
“A lot of them are my friends,” Wells said.
Stelco ‘isn’t showing any loyalty’
Steel runs in Shaw’s blood — her father and grandfather worked in the industry. She recalls getting hired at Stelco in January 2000 after being laid off from Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, where she grew up.
“It kind of felt like I won the lottery at that time,” she said.
Working at Stelco for 26 years allowed her to thrive, she said. But permanent layoffs could force her to sell her home, which she’s owned for 10 years.
Shaw has spent years personalizing the red-brick house, adding a shed-turned-custom tiki bar beside the backyard pool and painting the kitchen cabinets by hand. It would “really suck” to sell, she said.
“I’m mentally prepared that if that’s what I have to do to survive, that’s what I have to do,” she said.
Laid-off workers who are the breadwinners will have to tighten their families’ budgets, Wells said. They’re financially stressed, he added, but they’re also angry.
The job is dirty, hot and dangerous. Shift work means people miss their kids’ hockey games, family time and holidays. But Stelco workers still show up, day in and day out.
“Our members are pretty loyal,” Wells said. “That’s why a lot of them are really p—sed, because this company isn’t showing any loyalty.”
A ‘jewel’ of Canada’s steel industry
In its heyday, Stelco employed 25,000 people and locals would say that every steelworker job supported five other jobs in Hamilton.
Wells joined the company in 1979 as an 18-year-old when his father, also a Stelco employee, handed him an application and said he’d “better do something.” When he started, Stelco was “probably hiring 20 guys a week.”
Other men working in the union office share a similar story: their father or father-in-law worked at Stelco, they joined and have worked there for decades, and now their sons do, too.
After financial challenges in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stelco was sold to U.S. Steel in 2007. Layoffs, lockouts and restructurings followed, until Cleveland-Cliffs bought the company for about $3.4 billion in 2024.
But as Canada shipped steel south of the border, cheaper imports from countries such as China, South Korea and Turkey have filtered into the Canadian market and made competition harder for domestic products.
Union leaders have been “loud and clear” that Canada needs to up its restrictions on foreign steel imports, said Marty Warren, Canada’s national director of the United Steelworkers union. On that point, they agree with Goncalves.
But “he’s holding basically our members, laid-off members, as hostage in this negotiation over trade,” Wells said.
While the reality is harsh, Warren said, getting shut out of the U.S. steel market could be a wake-up call for Canada. “We got to get off the U.S. nipple.”
The domestic steel industry supports Canadian jobs and sovereignty, he said, and Stelco is a “jewel” within it.
If Stelco and the industry can use this moment to take back more of the domestic market, their future could be bright, Warren said. And while the Canadian steel industry’s ties to the U.S. will “never be the same,” maybe that’s OK.
“We should never be this vulnerable.”
Back to work?
Wells says he thinks Stelco’s laid-off workers will end up back on the job, either as a result of the federal government’s threatened court battle or if a Canada-U.S. trade deal is reached.
“But that’s going to take time,” he said. “And our members don’t have time.”
Shaw says permanent layoffs could force her to sell her home. The layoff also solidified her decision to sell the rental property she owns, she says, even though the market is “garbage.”
But then, at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, she got a call from Stelco she wasn’t expecting. Even though the galvanizing line was still down, they asked her to come back to work, starting Monday.
“We will be working 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. all week. Doing what? I have no clue. I guess we’ll find that out on Monday.”
With files from The Canadian Press
