Unifor continuing fight for Brampton after bargaining with Stellantis collapses, Roshel signs MOU to buy assembly plant

Amid the uncertainty of Brampton’s idled Stellantis plant, a new player is trying to revive the facility. 

On September 11, Canadian arms manufacturer Roshel announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Stellantis for the potential sale of the plant. 

Unifor local 1285 President Vito Beato addressed the members in a Facebook video directly, confirming the union has paused bargaining after an impasse with Stellantis. He reminded members that Unifor first opposed a potential sale back in August, when the company notified the union it was considering closing and selling the plant to a third party, a position Stellantis has maintained at the bargaining table, in its attempt to save about 3,000 unionized jobs in Brampton. 

He reassured members that the messy situation is not their fault, saying the plant’s workforce is caught in the middle of a “completely unnecessary trade war with the U.S.” Beato said the bargaining team is constantly thinking about the members and their families as thousands directly tied to the Brampton facility fear their livelihood is in jeopardy. 

“I'm thinking about every single member that has been affected by this decision, but especially those members who are in the middle of their careers, their family lives with small kids, mortgages, bills to pay, kids to feed, all of you who were promised a future that the company has reneged on,” the local union leader said. 

“No third party should be getting involved in any of our bargaining, and especially in discussions about the future of our assembly plant,” he said, regarding the overture by Roshel, reminding members that Unifor is still their bargaining agent. 

Beato also said that Local 1285 is already looking at income protection options for members who have been off the job since last year, when Stellantis announced a retooling of the plant to build the Jeep Compass, before those plans were cancelled when the giant auto manufacturer, under tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, decided to shift the Compass production south of the border. 

Although details regarding the MOU between Stellantis and Roshel are sparse, both companies claim they are committed to signing an agreement. Many questions remain unanswered: what happens with the current round of negotiations between UNIFOR and Stellantis; would an acquisition create jobs for the Brampton workers; and would Unifor agree to work with Roshel, a company that is non-unionized? 

President of Unifor Local 1285 Vito Beato in a Facebook video repeated the position that a U.S. tariff war, not anything the union has done, led to the current dire situation in Brampton.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

Roshel responded to The Pointer with a statement addressing local jobs. Naresh Raghubeer, the company’s co-founder and managing partner, said Roshel wants to build a, “Canadian Centre of Excellence for Defence Manufacturing” in Brampton on top of its existing automotive work, and is ready to issue laid-off Unifor workers letters of commitment for first consideration. Some workers, the statement said, could be back on the job as early as this year, through the federal government’s Light Utility Vehicles procurement program and other opportunities. 

A key question is whether union members might be compelled to switch to a non-unionized work situation, to avoid unemployment.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer) 

Raghubeer said the company hopes to wrap up talks with Stellantis and follow through on a plan to bring more than 2,000 jobs back to the site, along with new domestic capabilities, including the production of ballistic steel. 

Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin confirmed in a statement to The Pointer that the company has “entered into a memorandum of understanding with Roshel” and that after weighing “a number of potential opportunities” Stellantis landed on Roshel, which offered a strong path to restoring sustainable operations at the Brampton facility, preserving its role in Canada’s advanced manufacturing sector. 

Gosselin did not comment further on the ongoing collective bargaining process with Unifor.

In its September 11 statement announcing updates on bargaining, Unifor spokesperson Kathleen O’Keefe said the company’s proposal to close and sell the Brampton plant has hindered negotiations, and warned a sale would threaten members’ wages, pensions and benefits. 

The union said there will be no tentative settlement without a suitable resolution for Local 1285 members, and noted Stellantis has also not confirmed plans for the Windsor Assembly Plant and Etobicoke Casting Plant. 

In October 2025, thousands of Brampton Stellantis workers learned through a robocall from the plant manager that production of the next-generation Jeep Compass was being moved from Brampton to Illinois. The announcement came just before Stellantis publicly announced a $13-billion U.S. investment intended to increase American production. Beato described the communication as “very impersonal…disrespectful and disgusting”. It was the first communication workers had received from the company since February of last year. 

Workers said the decision left thousands of Brampton families facing serious financial uncertainty. Beato said the Stellantis’ messaging about transfers and unspecified “big plans” for Brampton risked becoming a distraction from the loss of the Jeep Compass build out. 

In January, The Pointer reported on Ottawa’s new agreement with China on EV imports and the added uncertainty it created for the laid-off Brampton workers as the federal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney began efforts to decouple much of the country’s economic engineering from the U.S. Carney’s government signed a deal with China to renew imports and start bringing in 49,000 EVs to Canada which will gradually increase. This was after the Stellantis plant in Windsor added more than 1,000 workers to a third shift while the Brampton assembly remained idle.

In August, Stellantis reported that it was “seriously considering” selling the idled Brampton Assembly Plant before talks with Unifor began prior to the September 20 expiry of the contract. A tentative deadline was set for September 11, as both sides sat at the negotiating table, while trade talks between Ottawa and Washington to renew the free trade agreement collapsed. More tariffs on Canadian-made automobiles bound for the U.S. now loom. 

No deal was reached between Stellantis and Unifor as talks stalled amid a gloomy forecast for the future of a Canadian-American automobile sector. 

For now, it seems the future of thousands of Brampton workers and their families is also bleak. 

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