{"id":595585,"date":"2026-04-10T21:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595585\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T21:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:17:16","slug":"autoworkers-uprooting-their-lives-amid-uncertainty-with-brampton-stellantis-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595585\/","title":{"rendered":"Autoworkers uprooting their lives amid uncertainty with Brampton Stellantis plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. tariffs on auto importing have caused mass uncertainty across Canada as companies adjust their strategies to deal with the extra costs.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is that more true than in Brampton, a city where nearly 3,000 people were employed at the Stellantis plant.<\/p>\n

Nathan Reilly, a lifelong Bramptonian, was an autoworker at the Stellantis plant since 2014. He\u2019s one of the more than 200 workers who moved 350 kilometres away for a job at the Windsor plant when Stellantis cancelled its plans to build the Jeep Compass in Brampton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have never thought [I\u2019d live] this far out, London\u2019s the furthest I\u2019ve ever come out this way, but I would\u2019ve never thought in a million years Windsor,\u201d said Reilly in an interview with CityNews.<\/p>\n

Stellantis employed 3,000 people at the Brampton plant, resulting in thousands of spin-off jobs in the auto sector. It closed for retooling in late 2023 with workers expected to get back on the job in the spring of 2026.<\/p>\n

Instead, the retooling stopped and the promised vehicle got moved to Illinois. A few hundred workers made the decision to move and work at the Windsor plant.<\/p>\n

Reilly, a father of four including a son with special needs, was among them and had to uproot his whole life.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nathan Reilly with his wife and four kids. Reilly uprooted his family from Brampton to Windsor when the Stellantis plant shut down. Photo credit: Nathan Reilly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole lot that had to be taken into consideration because \u2026 well, for one, my dad\u2019s terminally ill, my grandfather, nobody else is around to take care of him,\u201d shared Reilly. \u201cAnd then taking my family into consideration as well. That was a bigger conversation that had to be had with more people, right? My kids weren\u2019t happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither was Vito Beato, the president of Unifor Local 1285.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re uprooting families. You\u2019re uprooting your lives. So very, very big decision for our members to make to try to maintain their work and 100 per cent of their pay,\u201d said Beato.<\/p>\n

Many workers should be back on the Brampton line by now, but \u201ceverything is uncertain right now \u2026 [and] during that whole time that we\u2019ve been down,\u201d according to Beato.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a car lined up, but we do have a negotiated contract that speaks to the Jeep Compass and speaks to the investment. And the company keeps saying, \u2018Big plans for Brampton,\u2019 so we\u2019re going to keep pressing because they can\u2019t just walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stellantis has already received over $200 million in funding from the federal government to retool the Brampton and Windsor plants. The City of Brampton also recently rezoned the land the plan sits on for automotive manufacturing only.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company can\u2019t do anything there other than automotive manufacturing. So they can\u2019t sell it and try to build homes. They can\u2019t sell it and try to build townhouses, they can\u2019t sell it and turn it into a warehouse or an Amazon [warehouse]. They can only build cars there,\u201d Beato said.<\/p>\n

Stellantis wouldn\u2019t say what plans it has for the plant or the land and believes it doesn\u2019t owe the Canadian government any money back because of the jobs it created in Windsor.<\/p>\n

\u201cStellantis remains focused on a strong Canadian footprint and is actively evaluating future programs for Brampton, with the objective to ensure that any investment decision is sustainable and a long-term commitment that supports workers and suppliers,\u201d read their statement to CityNews.<\/p>\n

While the union is still fighting to get another vehicle in the Brampton plant, Reilly says he and his won\u2019t be making a U-turn and coming home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I could. I don\u2019t think I can do that to my family now. Everyone\u2019s going to be established here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There were rumours that Stellantis was in talks with Chinese electric vehicle maker Leapmotor to start assembling some vehicles in Brampton, but Stellantis didn\u2019t address CityNews\u2019 questions about those talks or potential negotiations with other Chinese EV manufacturers.<\/p>\n

And while all levels of government have been advocating for the return of Stellantis, the City of Brampton is setting its sights on attracting the next big industries.<\/p>\n

This story is the first of a three-part series taking a look at how Brampton and Oshawa are adjusting to no longer having auto plants currently operating in their cities and the auto workers affected.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tThe Stellantis vehicle assembly plant is shown in Brampton, Ont., on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Nathan Denette <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. tariffs on auto importing have caused mass uncertainty across Canada as companies adjust their strategies to deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[51759,49,48],"class_list":["post-595585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brampton","tag-brampton","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}