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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday that a bankruptcy plan proposed by Patriot Coal Corp. is "outrageous and must be stopped" because it diverts money intended for coal miners' retirement benefits, Reuters reported on Friday. "Patriot Coal is trying to take $18 million of the $22 million put aside for retired coal miners, wives and widows and use it to pay its lawyers instead," Clinton said. "Ensuring healthcare and retirement security should be the first priority in a bankruptcy proceeding, not the last." Clinton, who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for the November 2016 presidential race, was referring to workers at an Indiana mine that operated under an agreement between a Patriot subsidiary and the Aluminum Company of America. According to court filings, the Patriot subsidiary operated the mine and in return Alcoa Inc. reimbursed some mine worker benefits. The two companies are now terminating that agreement, with Alcoa paying Patriot $22 million.

United Auto Workers union members widely rejected a tentative contract offered by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, dealing a blow to the union’s president after he championed the deal as a fair bargain that addressed the inequities workers complained about, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A tally of local voting results showed defeat of the agreement; however, the UAW has yet to officially release a statement confirming the vote. It is the first time a tentative national labor contract has been rejected by UAW members in 30 years, underscoring the level of discontent among factory workers and uncertainty about product commitments from the U.S.-Italian auto maker. UAW President Dennis Williams now needs to go back to the bargaining table to redraw an agreement that can be used as a pattern with General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.

Stock in Republic Airways Holdings Inc. soared 82 percent after the company reached a tentative agreement with its pilots union that eases concerns of a possible bankruptcy filing, Bloomberg News reported today. Terms of the three-year contract weren’t immediately disclosed in yesterday’s statement from the airline and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The accord now goes to a ratification vote by Republic’s 2,100 pilots. Republic said in August that it might be forced into court-supervised restructuring because the lack of a contract was contributing to a pilot shortage.

The union representing Haggen’s workers is getting a seat at the table on the struggling grocery chain’s bankruptcy reorganization, although it’s unclear how much influence it will be able to exert in the process, the Seattle Times reported today. Documents filed with a bankruptcy court in Delaware showed that the U.S. Trustee’s office overseeing the case picked United Food and Commercial Workers International as one of the seven members of the unsecured creditors committee. The members represent the dozens of parties to whom Haggen owes money, but whose claims are not backed by collateral assets. The other members of the committee are distributor Unified Grocers, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Santa Monica Seafood, Valassis Communications and Spirit SPE HG, a retail landlord.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the United Automobile Workers union reached a tentative agreement yesterday on a new contract that could establish a pattern for labor deals at the other two American carmakers, General Motors and Ford, the New York Times reported today. The deal was reached after marathon bargaining sessions between the two sides that began on Sunday when the union picked Fiat Chrysler as the first company to negotiate with. Previous four-year labor deals with the Detroit automakers expired at midnight on Monday. GM and Ford each agreed to extend their UAW contracts while Fiat Chrysler negotiated with the union, and will most likely continue the extensions during their own upcoming talks.