Stelco to recall 175 laid-off workers at Hamilton steel plant

Stelco has just announced it is preparing to recall close to 200 laid-off workers as it restarts its Hamilton, Ontario, finishing operations. The steel company says it is due to what it calls improved customer demand. Back in September, a memo was sent, an internal letter to employees, said up to 500 workers at its Hamilton Works and Lake Erie Works. Could be affected by layoffs. Now, what we found out this week from the unions is that 175 workers had been laid off in Hamilton and no lay layoffs had taken place at Lake Erie. So of that 500, actually only 175 had actually been laid off. Now, they seem that they're going to be restated. That's going to happen on the 1st of December. And the company. They are arguing the reason they had to make these layoffs in the first place was due to U.S. tariffs, a weak demand for Canadian steel. They're now saying, actually, there's been an uptick in demand, and that's why they're bringing back the workers. However, and this is the important bit, there is context to this in terms of the relationship with the government, because we know it's been pretty fought, and it's been very public, that the industry minister... Melanie Joly essentially said that the company was committing violations under the Investment Canada Act and that effectively she would not meet with the company again unless they had set out a plan to bring back these employees. And there's been lots of speculation the government actually might force Cleveland Cliffs to sell Stelco to make sure that it commits to those binding agreements.