Up to 500 Stelco Jobs at Risk as Cleveland-Cliffs Idles Hamilton Lines

Up to 500 workers at Stelco's Hamilton, Ontario plant could lose their jobs as the company indefinitely idles its cold-rolled and coated operations and shifts production to its Lake Erie facility in Nanticoke. The announcement, made Monday by U.S. parent Cleveland-Cliffs, lands in the middle of an escalating Canada-U.S. trade war in which Washington imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and Ottawa has retaliated in kind.

The market signal behind the decision is stark. In a memo to employees, Stelco said demand in its traditional markets for cold-rolled and galvanized products fell almost 25% in the second quarter compared with the 2024 quarterly average, including a 10% decline within Canada itself. For a worker on Hamilton's finishing lines, that is not an abstract trade statistic — it is the demand curve for their specific output contracting by a quarter in a year.

Cleveland-Cliffs frames the move as a consolidation, not an exit. The Ohio-based company said output will be concentrated at Stelco's Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, with overall steel tonnage unchanged and no production leaving Canada. It expects a significant number of affected Hamilton workers to be absorbed at the Lake Erie site — a claim that matters enormously for anyone weighing a commute to Nanticoke against waiting out a recall in Hamilton.

The political fight escalated fast. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday accused Cleveland-Cliffs of betraying Canadian workers and singled out CEO Lourenco Goncalves, who has publicly championed Trump's steel tariffs and called the 50% duties "a necessary step" to protect U.S. steelmakers.

"Our thoughts are with the workers and the families who have been betrayed by the company," Carney said.

Carney also threatened legal action. The federal government approved Cleveland-Cliffs' C$3.4 billion ($2.4 billion) takeover of Stelco in October 2024 on the condition that it meet legally binding five-year employment commitments — including maintaining at least the same number of unionized workers and the vast majority of nonunion employees. Those commitments now sit at the center of a potential court battle, and they give affected workers a contractual anchor rare in mass layoff situations.

"There's money on the table from the federal government," Carney said, referring to an undisclosed financial assistance offer aimed at preserving jobs. "The company made representations and has legal obligations for employment. We intend to use all powers that we have and pursue them to the fullest extent of the law."

Cleveland-Cliffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Carney's remarks.

The tariff context cuts in several directions at once. At a White House event Monday announcing a new $15 billion steel plant in Iowa, Trump credited his tariffs with reducing foreign steel imports and attracting U.S. investment, saying companies were building plants there "because they don't want to pay tariffs." For Canadian steelworkers, that same policy pressure is what Stelco says "significantly shrunk the market" for its products — a reminder that tariff-driven investment flows in one jurisdiction can directly subtract demand from another.

For Hamilton's affected workers, three variables will determine individual outcomes: how many roles actually transfer to Nanticoke, how the binding employment commitments are enforced or litigated, and whether Ottawa's financial assistance materializes in a form that keeps lines running. Carney's threat to pursue legal remedies "to the fullest extent of the law" signals that the final headcount at Stelco may not be settled by this week's announcement but by what happens in the months ahead.