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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV's late CEO Sergio Marchionne orchestrated a multimillion-dollar racketeering conspiracy — including bribes — that corrupted three rounds of bargaining with the United Auto Workers and harmed General Motors Co., according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by GM, the <em>Detroit News</em> reported. In the federal racketeering lawsuit filed yesterday against the Italian American automaker, GM said that "clear admissions of wrongdoing" by FCA executives amid a continuing federal investigation into the union exposed a multi-year pattern of corruption that FCA used to cause GM "massive monetary damage." The lawsuit promises an unprecedented public fight between two titans of the U.S. auto industry, each just a decade removed from nearly $82 billion taxpayer-funded bankruptcies that enabled both of them to close plants, cut jobs and winnow brands, especially GM. The legal confrontation comes as FCA is locked in national contract talks with the UAW and is negotiating a transatlantic merger with Groupe PSA of France, maker of Peugeot and Citroën cars. The lawsuit seeks to put a price tag on damage related to crimes committed by FCA executives who have been convicted in federal court during a years-long corruption crackdown in federal court. The probe has produced 10 convictions, charges against 13 and implicated Marchionne, UAW President Gary Jones and Dennis Williams, Jones's predecessor atop the union.

WeWork is preparing to cut at least 4,000 people from its work force as it tries to stabilize itself after the company’s breakneck growth racked up heavy losses and led it to the brink of collapse, the New York Times reported. The cuts are expected to be announced as early as this week and will take place across WeWork’s sprawling global operation. Under the plan, the company’s core business of subletting office space would lay off 2,000 to 2,500 employees. An additional 1,000 employees will leave as WeWork sells or closes down noncore businesses, like a private school in Manhattan that WeWork set up. Additionally, roughly 1,000 building maintenance employees will be transferred to an outside contractor. Together, these employees would represent around a third of the 12,500 people WeWork employed at the end of June. In an email to employees on Monday, the company’s executive chairman, Marcelo Claure, said, “We have to make some necessary job eliminations.” He said the cuts would begin this week in the U.S. but did not say how many people would lose their jobs.

Union workers have approved a four-year labor contract with Ford Motor, accepting wage increases and other terms nearly identical to the agreement reached with General Motors, the New York Times reported. The United Automobile Workers union announced Friday that the agreement had been backed by 56 percent of those voting. The pact calls for Ford’s 55,000 union workers to receive 3 percent wage increases in the second and fourth years of the contract and 4 percent lump-sum payments in the first and third years. Worker contributions toward health coverage are unchanged at about 3 percent of the total cost. The union reached the same terms with G.M. last month after a strike that shut down most of the company’s operations in North America for 40 days. It was the longest nationwide strike against General Motors in 49 years. G.M. has said that the strike will lower its operating profit in 2019 by about $3 billion.

Sears is laying off hundreds of corporate workers less than a week after announcing a new round of store closures, Business Insider reported. The layoffs impacted workers at Sears' headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, as well as the company's offices in San Francisco. The total number of laid-off employees is fewer than 300. Sears' parent company, Transformco, which also owns Kmart stores, confirmed the layoffs. "Since purchasing substantially all the assets of Sears Holdings Corp. in February 2019, Transformco has faced a difficult retail environment," the statement said. The company last laid off corporate employees in September. That round of layoffs impacted about 250 people.

McClatchy Co., the third-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. by circulation, said it has begun talks with its creditors and federal authorities about a possible government takeover of its pension fund as it tries to relieve considerable liquidity pressure due to its pension responsibilities and debt load, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 162-year-old company, which publishes 30 newspapers around the country, including the Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star, said that it would be unable to make a required $124 million contribution next year to its pension fund. “The amount due greatly exceeds the company’s anticipated cash balances and cash flow given the size of its operations relative to the obligations due and creates a significant liquidity challenge in 2020,” the company said in its third-quarter earnings report filed on Wednesday. In late 2018, merger talks between McClatchy and Tribune Publishing Co. fell apart largely due to questions about how to finance the deal given McClatchy’s substantial debt burden. In the quarter, the company reported a net loss of $304.7 million, largely due to a noncash impairment charge related to the valuation of its assets. On an adjusted basis, McClatchy reported a loss of $1.3 million compared with a loss of $23.8 million in the same quarter last year. The company has reported a net loss in nine of its previous 12 quarters.

For more than four years, coal-state lawmakers joined miners in raising political pressure on Congress to shore up union pensions amid a crisis of coal industry bankruptcies and layoffs, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Each time legislation was advanced by West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin (D) and Shelley Moore Capito (R) — with vocal support from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) — the measures died without a vote, despite Capitol Hill rallies, public hearings and searing statements. This month, they finally got the elusive endorsement they had been waiting for, one that helps move the pension fix forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signed on to the American Miners Act, a bill that transfers excess funds from abandoned mine reclamation to shore up a United Mine Workers of America retirement plan, which is projected to go broke by 2022. McConnell said that there were a “startling” number of miners on pension plans that had gone bankrupt. He said that he had personally raised the issue with President Donald Trump last week. “The drastically underfunded pension plan presents an urgent crisis for entire communities of miners, retirees, and their families,” he stated. The coal miners’ fund is among many multi-employer pension funds managed jointly by employers and labor unions that have faced steep declines. The 2008 financial crisis eliminated a chunk of workers’ retirement savings and falling employment in some industries have eroded the fund’s ability to pay for benefits for a ballooning number of retirees. Earlier this year, the Western Pennsylvania Teamsters and Employers Pension Fund in Pittsburgh, facing insolvency in the coming years, received federal approval to cut pension benefits by 30 percent.

Retirees could take smaller mandatory withdrawals from their tax-advantaged accounts under a new Treasury Department proposal designed to adjust for rising life expectancy, the Wall Street Journal reported. If finalized, the rules would take effect in 2021, reducing tax collections and letting more money accumulate in tax-preferred accounts. The change amounts to a tax cut for retirees who don’t need to tap their savings for living expenses. According to an example in the regulations, a 70-year-old with a $250,000 retirement account would be required to withdraw $8,591 instead of $9,124. A 75-year-old with a $500,000 balance could reduce that year’s withdrawals — and thus taxable income — by about $1,500, according to Ed Slott, an accountant in Rockville Centre, N.Y., who specializes in retirement accounts.

A dozen U.S. Senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are backing legislation to shore up a pension plan covering 92,000 retired coal miners that has been depleted during a brutal downturn in the coal industry, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Sens. McConnell (R-Ky.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) introduced a bill yesterday that would transfer excess money from an abandoned mine reclamation fund to a United Mine Workers of America multiemployer pension plan. Without an infusion of public funds, the pension fund is projected to become insolvent by its 2022 plan year. U.S. coal companies that once supported the plan have dropped out over the years as they went bankrupt and sold their assets to new owners. Murray Energy Corp., which filed for bankruptcy last month, is the last major contributor still paying into the pension plan. Now Murray, too, may leave. If the pension plan becomes insolvent, the U.S. government’s pension insurer would be required to step in and cover benefits up to certain caps. The legislation is backed by nine Democratic and three Republican senators. In addition to shoring up the pension plan, it would also give miners whose companies went bankrupt since last year access to medical benefits that Congress established in 2017.