At least 20 supervisors and other salaried employees of Algoma Steel Group Inc. have received layoff notices.
The laid-off staff are all members of United Steelworkers Local 2724, which represents about 500 front-line supervisors at the Sault steelmaker, as well as shift co-ordinators, planners, and office and technical professionals.
The layoff notices were distributed last week.
William Slater, Local 2724 president, tells SooToday that some of the layoffs are attributed to the temporary blast furnace shutdown reported last week.
Others are related to longer-term issues.
"There's a combination of both. That's about all I could say," Slater said.
"There's some people who are going to be possibly longer. Some people will be as short as a week or two because of the blast furnace coming back online, hopefully.
"But people have been given different reasons. And they're saying everything is temporary, based on what happens with tariffs, with the American government and how it affects our steel sales," Slater said.
South of the border, there was bad news Monday about tariffs.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the decision had now been made and there's nothing Canadians could have done to stop his 25 per cent tariffs on goods from Canada from being imposed just after midnight.
The S&P 500 dropped 1.8 per cent after Trump's statement.
It was the S&P index's largest daily drop so far this year.
The Nasdaq fell 2.6 per cent.