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The UAW's agreement with General Motors is on the way to ratification after workers at Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, three facilities in Pontiac and plants in Wentzville, Mo., and Spring Hill, Tenn., gave it solid majorities yesterday, the Detroit Free Press reported today. The vote had been close until late Wednesday. About 700 members, 54 percent of UAW Local 22 members at Detroit-Hamtramck voted yes while 581 voted no. Similar to the pattern at most plants, production workers backed it by even larger majorities, but most skilled trades people voted no. But the biggest force pushing the deal toward passage came from about 3,500 workers at GM's midsize truck plant in Wentzville, Mo., where 57 percent voted in favor, as a strong majority of production workers more than offset opposition from skilled trades.

Coal miner Alpha Natural Resources Inc. is seeking to shed retiree benefits as efforts to come up with a restructuring plan take longer than expected, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Alpha in court papers on Tuesday asked a bankruptcy judge to let it terminate the medical, life insurance and other benefits it provides to about 4,580 non-union retirees or their spouses. The plans also potentially cover 6,670 active, non-union employees, although they wouldn't receive the benefits until their retirement. The benefits slated for termination don't include pensions. Alpha said that it in cutting the benefits by the end of the year, it hopes to escape about $125 million in future obligations. Maintaining the benefits cost the company about $2.7 million last year and about $2.8 million so far this year, court papers show.

Regional carrier Republic Airways Holdings Inc., which warned over the summer that it could be forced to file for bankruptcy-court protection if it couldn’t solve its pressing pilot hiring and retention challenges, said Tuesday that a majority of its 2,100 aviators approved a new three-year labor contract that significantly raises pay and improves work rules, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The pact, which will go into effect in a few days, will succeed the current contract, which hadn’t been updated in eight years. The new deal lifts starting first-officer pay to $40 an hour, raises pay for other first officers and boosts captain pay. Indianapolis-based Republic said it would invest about $50 million a year over the three-year duration of the new contract, including signing bonuses and anniversary bonuses.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton called on Peabody to do what she called “the right thing” and honor its commitments to help fund the benefits as part of a settlement reached in Patriot Coal Corp.’s first chapter 11 case, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Under that agreement, reached in 2013, Peabody agreed to pay $310 million over four years to help cover retiree health benefits. The deal resolved a long-running fight over who was responsible for the significant retiree liabilities that came with the mining units that Peabody spun off to create Patriot in 2007. Peabody asked a St. Louis bankruptcy judge to revisit that deal, arguing that the events of Patriot’s second chapter 11 case essentially take it off the hook for future obligations. The judge recently agreed to let Peabody move forward with this argument, which the United Mine Workers of America is appealing.

The United Auto Workers has struck a tentative labor deal with General Motors Co., avoiding a strike that would have dented the company’s U.S. production and clearing the path for members to vote on the proposal, which sets pay and benefits for the next four years, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Union officials didn’t disclose details of the agreement, which covers 52,600 union-represented members at GM. UAW officials, in a statement, said the deal presents “significant” wage gains and job commitments, and provides a road map for entry-level workers to grow into the more senior hourly wage. UAW officials will brief local union leaders this week, and those leaders will vote Wednesday. Members at GM’s dozens of unionized U.S. factories and facilities will vote shortly after on whether to ratify the deal.

The United Auto Workers union said that it will negotiate a contract with General Motors Co., after Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV workers approved an enhanced four-year agreement that won across-the-board raises and a path to senior-level pay for entry-level workers, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Fiat Chrysler vote was about 77 percent in favor of the proposal, the union said yesterday. Fiat Chrysler and the UAW reached the accord Oct. 7, shortly before a strike might have shut down most of the company’s U.S. production. The workers rejected an earlier deal almost 2-to-1 largely because it left the two levels of pay in place. The approval at Fiat Chrysler lets the union move on to getting tentative contracts with GM and Ford Motor Co. UAW President Dennis Williams is seeking similar but more lucrative deals with the other two automakers. The union said that it will continue talks with Ford while pursuing a contract with GM.

Relativity Television’s employees, including chief executive Tom Forman, are expected to remain in place when senior lenders buy the TV studio from the ailing company later this month, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. In bankruptcy court papers filed on Monday, the group of senior lenders that are buying the TV studio out of bankruptcy sought to reassure its employees, the bankruptcy judge and a handful of remaining objectors that they can expect “business as usual” after the deal is completed. The company’s lenders will go before Judge Michael Wiles today to face the remaining objectors and to address lingering questions before the sale closes Oct. 20.

The finances of more than two-thirds of U.S. state pension plans improved in fiscal year 2014, as a soaring stock market boosted returns and many states stopped incorporating losses from the recession into their pension calculations, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The median state pension last year had 70 percent of the assets needed to meet promised benefits, up from 69.2 percent in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was the second straight increase in pension funding. Public pensions had median investment gains of 16.9 percent for the 12 months ended June 30, 2014 according to Wilshire Associates. Illinois, with a pension shortfall of more than $100 billion, remains the state with the worst-funded retirement system, with a ratio of assets to liabilities of 39.3 percent, followed by Kentucky at 45 percent and Connecticut at 50.4 percent.

Health care trusts created nearly a decade ago to cover medical expenses for hundreds of thousands of Detroit’s hourly retirees reported a funding shortfall of $20.7 billion last year, more than quadruple the gap recorded in 2013, according to government filings, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Administrators of the funds, also known as voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations (VEBAs) said that financial reporting rules require conservative assumptions regarding return estimates, leading to a higher expected liability. It is unclear whether the gap could eventually force the funds—established by the United Auto Workers union to take retiree medical liabilities for factory workers off the car companies’ books—to cut costs and trim benefits. The trusts representing retirees at General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recorded net assets of $60 billion last year, down less than a percentage point from the previous period, according to filings made with the U.S. Labor Department. But the funds’ benefit obligations grew 23 percent to $80.84 billion from 2013 to 2014. At the end of last year, the trusts were 74 percent funded versus 93 percent in the prior year.