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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and the United Auto Workers union agreed to extend their current four-year contract, set to expire at midnight yesterday, while they keep negotiating toward a new accord, Bloomberg News reported today. The existing agreement will be extended on an hour-by-hour basis as bargaining continues, the union said. The UAW usually reaches a deal with one company first, often the strongest, in hopes of setting a template for pay and benefits for the other two Detroit automakers to follow. This year, the union bucked that tradition, choosing the weakest of the three after Fiat Chrysler laid bare its need for a merger partner.

The United Auto Workers chose Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, the weakest of the Detroit Three carmakers, as the surprise target for negotiating a new four-year labor agreement, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The choice bucks the union’s tradition of choosing the strongest company among Fiat Chrysler, General Motors Co. or Ford Motor Co. to extract the best terms for its 140,000 members, a process known as pattern bargaining. This year’s dynamics were unusual because Fiat Chrysler laid bare its weaknesses and has been vocal about the need for a merger partner. The UAW’s contracts with Fiat Chrysler’s North American unit, GM and Ford are set to expire at midnight tonight in Detroit. The union will focus on Fiat Chrysler while working with all three companies toward a collective bargaining agreement, UAW President Dennis Williams said yesterday.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state economic development organization, classifies 93 of 420 counties in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia as financially distressed, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Many utilities have replaced Appalachian coal with cheaper fuel from Illinois and the Powder River basin in Wyoming and Montana, or switched to burning natural gas. Coal’s share of electricity generation in the U.S. will fall to 35 percent this year, from 50 percent a decade ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Coal production is expected to fall to less than 914 million tons, the lowest in 29 years. The number of active pits in the U.S. has plunged 39 percent from the end of 2005 through June 2015. Most of Appalachian counties’ lost revenue comes from a drop in payments known as severance taxes, which mining companies pay into state coffers based on the value of coal tonnage taken from the earth. West Virginia’s Boone County got about $2 million this year, down from almost $6 million in 2011, says Commissioner Mickey Brown. In Kentucky, severance money paid to counties totaled $23.4 million in 2015, compared with $62 million five years ago. Letcher County’s quarterly severance checks dropped to $200,000, from about $700,000 two years ago.

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. jumped the most among U.S. airlines after federal mediators set a Sept. 16 meeting that may rekindle contract negotiations with the carrier’s pilots union and help avoid a bankruptcy filing, Bloomberg News reported today. The National Mediation Board asked both sides yesterday to attend the session in Washington, D.C., where the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 357 will give the regional carrier its latest counterproposal, said union local President James Clark. The union declined to allow members to vote on Republic’s last offer. “If we can negotiate, we’ll start” after presenting the union plan at the meeting, Clark said. “If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It really depends on what the company does.” Republic said it will attend the meeting in Washington.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is preparing to press for a property-tax increase of about $500 million to shore up police and firefighter pensions that threaten the city’s solvency, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The proposal will be part of Emanuel’s Sept. 22 spending plan for the budget year beginning Jan. 1. The increase, expected for months, would be the centerpiece of a budget that is $426 million out of balance. The city faces a financial reckoning after years of failing to save enough to pay the benefits it promised employees. Over the past decade, Chicago has put $7.3 billion less into the pension funds than actuaries recommended. Its next annual pension payment is projected to jump 10 percent, to $976 million. Chicago’s effort to reduce its liabilities hit an obstacle in July, when a judge ruled the benefits cuts it sought were illegal. The city will appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, which in May threw out a pension overhaul adopted by the state, saying workers’ pensions are protected.

Patriot Coal Corp. averted a bankruptcy showdown with its miners on Thursday, after the union representing its workers and the company’s proposed suitor agreed on a new employment pact, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Patriot attorney Michael Slade said in bankruptcy court that talks between the company, the United Mine Workers of America union and proposed Patriot buyer Blackhawk Mining LLC yielded an agreement on “material terms” of a new collective bargaining agreement for Patriot’s unionized workers at what would be the post-merger company. Like a similar deal reached with the nonprofit organization hoping to buy a smaller subset of Patriot’s assets, this agreement is subject to ratification by union members. The union will ask its members to vote on the accord once the bankruptcy court has granted Patriot’s request to reject the existing collective bargaining agreements covering miners at Patriot.

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. shares almost erased a decline after the airline’s pilot union said it was ready to resume talks on a contract, easing investor concern of a possible bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The regional carrier has said a court-supervised restructuring is an option if a new contract isn’t secured. The shares had plunged as much as 32 percent after Teamsters General President James Hoffa refused to overturn a decision by Local 357 negotiators to skip a vote on the latest offer, which Republic had called a “final” one. Local 357 “is ready to resume negotiations” with Republic to reach an agreement as soon as possible, union President James Clark told members yesterday.

Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain yesterday said Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. could make changes to its collective-bargaining agreements with union employees as the supermarket chain braces for its first swath of store closings, but he noted that some of the requested provisions must be changed to be more employee-friendly, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Judge Drain approved the company's request to avoid so-called bumping provisions that allow employees in closing stores to take jobs of more junior employees at other locations, but he ordered A&P to increase the amount of severance money it immediately pays to workers being let go. An A&P lawyer said that the company had reached a compromise on the bumping provisions with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Local 1776, which represents 1,078 A&P employees, but not ones representing the company's other 27,400 or so workers. That deal allows a one-time move where senior workers in some of the 25 closing stores can take the jobs of junior employees at locations that remain open. The store closures are set to begin later this week.

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. may be moving closer to a possible bankruptcy after national Teamster officials backed a local pilot union’s decision against voting on the carrier’s final contract offer Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Teamsters “will not take the extraordinary step of ordering an election over the unanimous and emphatic objections of Local 357’s democratically elected local leadership,” General President James Hoffa said in a letter yesterday to Local 357. Republic shares plunged in late trading on the Teamsters’ decision, because the airline has said it might be forced into a court-supervised restructuring if a new contract isn’t secured. A chapter 11 filing is one possibility, Matt Koscal, vice president of human resources at Republic, said on Aug. 21.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc., which is trying to emerge from bankruptcy after losing its deal to supply scratch-resistant smartphone screens to Apple Inc., said yesterday that it was reducing its workforce by 40 percent in a bid to cut costs, MarketWatch.com reported yesterday. The company, which had already laid off nearly 700 workers at a former Arizona sapphire-manufacturing facility, said that the further cuts will save it $20 million a year and help it “right size” its costs after exiting chapter 11, according to court papers. A group of GT Advanced bondholders put up $95 million to fund the company’s bankruptcy restructuring. The company is using the cash to fund a revised plan that calls for the ex-Apple supplier to return to its roots of making industrial and solar equipment. A downsized GT Advanced still hopes to exit chapter 11 early next year.