More than 2,200 Stellantis workers in Brampton have been off the job for nearly three years, but they have not been left without a paycheque.

The workers have continued receiving income-security payments worth about 70 per cent of their regular earnings while the Brampton Assembly Plant remains idle.

Now that unusual arrangement is becoming an important part of the latest showdown between Stellantis and Unifor.

The union announced this week that Stellantis workers will vote Oct. 17 and 18 on whether to give Unifor a strike mandate as contract negotiations remain deadlocked.

For the Brampton workers, however, this isn’t simply a question of whether they will walk off the job.

They have already been off the job since December 2023.

Instead, the bigger question is how long their current financial safety net will remain in place as the fight over the future of the Brampton plant intensifies.

Unifor and Stellantis agreed last month to extend the income-security provisions covering laid-off members of Local 1285.

Under that agreement, the payments will continue until the two sides reach a legal strike or lockout position, or until a new collective agreement takes effect, whichever comes first.

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That means the upcoming strike vote does not immediately shut off the payments.

A “yes” vote would give Unifor’s bargaining committee the authority to call a strike if negotiations fail. It does not automatically mean workers will strike, and it does not by itself end the Brampton income-security arrangement.

But it does move the long-running dispute another step closer to a potential confrontation.

The Brampton plant was idled in December 2023 as Stellantis prepared to retool it for production of the Jeep Compass.

That production never arrived.

Stellantis paused the retooling in 2025 and later announced that future Compass production would be moved to the United States, leaving the Brampton facility without a confirmed vehicle program. More than 2,200 Local 1285 workers have remained on indefinite layoff.

Some workers have moved to other Stellantis operations, including Windsor, but thousands remain tied to the fate of the Brampton facility.

While they wait, the negotiated income-security provisions have provided approximately 70 per cent of their previous income.

The company has therefore continued providing financial support to a workforce that has not been producing vehicles at the Brampton plant for almost three years.

Neither Stellantis nor Unifor has publicly disclosed exactly how much the current payments cost the company each month.

But the potential figure is substantial.

If 2,200 workers were each receiving an average of $1,000 to $1,150 a week, for example, the total would work out to roughly $9.5 million to $11 million every month.

That is only an estimate based on reported workforce and income figures, not a figure released by Stellantis or Unifor. The actual current cost could be lower because some workers have transferred to other facilities or otherwise left the layoff group.

Still, it illustrates the scale of the unusual arrangement.

The income-security payments are now intertwined with the contract negotiations because of the way the latest extension was structured.

Unifor says the payments continue until the parties reach a legal strike or lockout position, or a new agreement comes into effect.

The collective agreement expired Sept. 20, but that did not immediately put Unifor in a legal strike position because mandatory conciliation under Ontario labour law had not yet been completed.

The union is now moving ahead with strike authorization votes.

If workers approve the mandate, Unifor would have the ability to call a strike later if it determines that negotiations have reached a point where a walkout is necessary.

And Brampton is one of the central issues.

Unifor says negotiations remain deadlocked over several matters, including the future of the Brampton Assembly Plant and Stellantis’ position that the economic settlement reached with the union is conditional on an agreement to close and sell the facility.

Stellantis has been pursuing a potential sale of the Brampton plant to Roshel, a Canadian defence manufacturer. The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding covering a potential transaction, with Roshel proposing to transform the facility into a defence manufacturing operation. Reuters reported that Roshel intends to prioritize laid-off Unifor workers for employment.

Unifor wants a different future for the facility and has made the Brampton issue a key part of its bargaining position.

The union has also said Stellantis has not issued formal written notice of a closure or sale. Under the collective agreement, Unifor says the company must provide at least one year’s notice of such a move.

That leaves the Brampton workers in a remarkable position.

They have been waiting nearly three years for their plant to resume production. They continue to receive a negotiated portion of their wages while they wait. And now, the labour negotiations that could determine the future of the facility are approaching a potential strike.

The Oct. 17-18 vote won’t decide whether the Brampton plant closes.

It won’t decide whether Roshel ultimately buys the facility.

And it won’t immediately end the income-security payments.

But it could give Unifor a powerful new bargaining tool at a time when the future of thousands of Brampton autoworkers remains unresolved.

The strike vote results are expected Oct. 19.


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