In households across Sault Ste. Marie this Christmas, the usual holiday cheer will be mixed with fear and uncertainty.
“Sitting around the Christmas table not knowing if you’re going to have a job is just awful,” said Bill Slater, president of USW local 2724, which represents salaried workers at Algoma Steel. “It’s causing a lot of grief. People are just trying to see if they’ll still have a job when the dust settles.”
Just weeks before Christmas, Algoma announced it will be laying off 1,000 workers — more than a third of its workforce — and union leaders say their members are reeling and feeling betrayed.
While layoffs have happened before, the size, timing and lack of communication with the union, make this round harder to digest than most, said Mike Da Prat, president of United Steelworkers Local 2251, which represents wage-earning workers at Algoma.
“It’s more callous and more noncaring than ever,” said Da Prat.
Algoma didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment for this story, but said in its Monday announcement that the layoffs were the result of a switchover to an electrical arc furnace that has been accelerated by U.S. president Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariff on steel imports.
For Da Prat, who spent decades working as an electrician at Algoma before shifting into his union role, this week’s news is something he never could have envisioned when he started his career in 1972.
“Getting a job at Algoma in those days, it was a career for life,” said Da Prat, who worries that some of his members won’t just lose their jobs, but their community. “The economy in the Sault can’t absorb 1,000 job seekers all at once successfully, especially specialized ones. It’s just not realistic.”
In some households, the pain will be doubled, said Slater.
“We have some husbands and wives who both work at Algoma. It’s a big employer in town,” said Slater, who also worked as an electrician at Algoma before shifting to his union role.
When he started working there decades ago, working at Algoma was something to aspire to, said Slater. For one thing, it meant you were probably making more than most other people in the city.
“Algoma at the time definitely had the highest wages in the city,” said Slater.
Now, said Slater, it’s a grimmer picture, as the union and company work on the fine details of just which 1,000 workers will no longer have a job come March.
For the city itself, which saw the end of a century-long association with the pulp and paper industry end with the 2011 closure of the St. Mary’s mill in 2011, the Algoma news is another economic blow, said Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker.
“The loss of 1,000 jobs is three per cent of our active workforce in this city,” said Shoemaker, adding that the knock-on effects will also be devastating.
“We’ve been going over the data, and as far as we can calculate it, those layoffs will mean another 3,000 jobs are gone elsewhere in the economy,” said Shoemaker. “This is not the end of the story.”
When job cuts are concentrated in a specific region, that makes the knock-on effects much more noticeable, said Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada.
“This is a sizable portion of the labour force in that region,” said Antunes, who noted that Algoma workers are likely to hold off on major purchases like cars or homes. And once the layoffs kick in, local businesses like coffee shops, restaurants and retailers are also likely to feel the pinch, Antunes said.
And in a city of just 72,000, having so many people lose their jobs all at once means almost every single household is either affected directly or knows someone who is, Shoemaker added.
“Nobody has more than one or two degrees of separation from Algoma. It’s a huge part of the community,” said Shoemaker, before rattling off some of his own connections to the steelmaker.
“My father’s an Algoma retiree. The coach for my kids’ hockey teams works there. I’ve got other friends and family members,” said Shoemaker.
While some layoffs were expected because of the transition to the electric arc furnace — a more efficient production method than the old blast furnace — the timing can be laid squarely at Trump’s feet, said Shoemaker.
“We thought the arc furnaces would come online at the end of 2026, and then there’d be a six-month transition,” said Shoemaker. “Because of the 50 per cent tariffs, this is a full year to 18 months earlier than anyone was expecting.”
The number of layoffs also came as a shock to union officials, said Marty Warren, the head of USW’s Canadian arm.
“I would have guessed it would have been in or around 600 people,” said Warren, who blasted Algoma for the number of layoffs happening so soon after accepting almost $1 billion from the federal and provincial governments.
“They do this after sitting on $900 million in government money? It’s outrageous,” said Warren. “I can be disappointed in governments for not getting more strings attached to the money, but for an employer to do something like this? It’s f…ing outrageous.”
The timing, Warren added, makes the cuts feel especially cruel.
“They’ve just ruined 1,000 families’ Christmases.”
