Unifor says the cuts hit current retirees and surviving spouses who earned the coverage over decades of service
Roughly a dozen retirees who spent 30 to 40 years building Titan Tool & Die have lost the health benefits and supplemental monthly pension payments they were promised would last through retirement, according to Unifor Local 195.
Randy St. Pierre, the Titan chair for Unifor Local 195, said the union had bargained for years so retirees would "get their benefits paid as long as they're retired," he told CBC Windsor.
The cuts hit current retirees and surviving spouses, he said, and 12 to 16 men have now lost all their benefits after a change first slated for April 12.
The loss of coverage lands hard on people on fixed incomes, St. Pierre said.
As reported by CBC, he warned that "you start to crunch, you don't get the food that you used to get or you don't pay bills to keep your medicine. There's a lot of decisions these retirees have to make now."
Unifor national president Lana Payne, in a Wednesday news release, framed the move as targeting those least able to absorb it.
"Going after the most vulnerable people in this dispute, retirees and their surviving spouses, is a disgraceful new low for Titan Tool & Die's owners," Payne said.
She added that the company was "cutting off health care and reducing pension benefits of the most vulnerable" rather than paying monies lawfully owed to workers.
Unifor Local 195 president Emile Nabbout told CBC Windsor the cuts hit beneficiaries with no way to recover them.
"The company is really hurting the surviving beneficiary for a pension family who work all their life and left some pension for their partners," Nabbout said.
He vowed members would not back down, saying, "We will be on that picket line until Titan Tool & Die pays every dollar it owes."
The benefit cuts come as the labour dispute nears 11 months, with Local 195 members locked out since August 11, 2025, according to CTV News.
Unifor also says Titan has filed for another injunction against the union and has yet to pay any severance and termination monies owed to locked-out workers.
Titan Tool and Die Limited is a privately owned manufacturing supplier based in Windsor, Ontario, founded in 1956, that makes custom metal stampings, welded assemblies and automotive tooling, CBC reported.
The article said it contacted the company to confirm the union's claims but received no response.
