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General Motors and the autoworkers’ union, confronting a period of flagging sales after years of record profits, reached a tentative contract deal yesterday that could end the company’s longest strike in half a century, the New York Times reported. The four-year agreement provides for a signing bonus of more than $8,000, as well as wage increases of 3 percent in some years and lump-sum payments of 4 percent in others, according to people familiar with the terms. They said it also included a path to permanent employment for temporary workers. G.M. confirmed the accord, but it was not clear how some of the most contentious matters — like narrowing pay gaps between long-term employees and more recent hires, and G.M. commitments to domestic production — have been resolved. Local U.A.W. leaders could decide today to end the strike immediately or to wait until the contract is ratified by G.M.’s 49,000 union members. The U.A.W. will then turn its attention to Ford Motor or Fiat Chrysler, seeking similar terms.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) yesterday called on state lawmakers to pass legislation this fall to consolidate nearly 650 police and firefighter retirement systems that are causing funding headaches for many local governments, Reuters reported. Pritzker said that the current system of governments maintaining their own pension funds “is failing,” noting that the formation of two new statewide funds would generate as much as $2.5 billion in additional investment returns over the next five years. “If adopted by the General Assembly, it would be a monumental achievement in the history of our state,” Pritzker told reporters. Ballooning pension liabilities for some cities have led to budget cuts and credit rating downgrades. The city of Alton, Ill., sold its regional wastewater system earlier this year to raise money for its pensions. The aggregate funded ratio for firefighter and police retirement systems outside of Chicago fell to 55.47 percent in 2017 from 57.58 percent in the prior year, according to a July report from the Illinois Legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. Unfunded liabilities rose by $1 billion to $11 billion.

Victoria’s Secret is laying off about 15 percent of the brand’s employees at its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters as the beleaguered lingerie chain struggles to reshape its image and the chief executive of its parent company remains under scrutiny for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Times reported. The cuts, which took place on Wednesday and Thursday, involved about 50 people and range from senior leaders to junior staff. The timing of the layoffs was unusual in the retail industry just before the key holiday season — and followed an optimistic outlook delivered to investors by the chief of its parent company, Leslie H. Wexner, last month. L Brands, the parent company, also owns Bath & Body Works. The shares of L Brands have plummeted in recent years based on the brand’s dismal performance, and it has discounted its products and ceded market share to nimble, more inclusive competitors. The brand has also been dogged by Wexner’s ties to Epstein, the financier who was arrested in July and charged with sex trafficking involving girls as young as 14. Wexner has sought to distance himself from the financier, whom he employed for more than a decade. He has also said Epstein “misappropriated vast sums of money” from him and his family, though no charges were ever filed.

General Motors chief executive Mary Barra this week secretly met with brass from the United Auto Workers for the first time since the union called a strike last month that has idled more than 46,000 employees, the New York Post reported. In an unusual move that union officials took as a positive step, Barra on Wednesday asked UAW president Gary Jones and Terry Dittes, the union’s vice president who’s leading the main talks, to come to a conference room near her office. GM officials on Tuesday had abruptly pulled out of a meeting for major negotiations in which officials were slated to discuss job security and bringing jobs back to the US from Mexico. No such meeting occurred on Wednesday, either, and Barra that afternoon appeared concerned that talks were off track, according to a source. UAW officials had been angling for a direct meeting with Barra as a way to break through on negotiations, which have remained stalled for about five days.

When Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez announced late last month that she was acceding to requests from the commonwealth’s Congressionally mandated fiscal oversight board to slash some government-worker pensions by as much as 8.5 percent, the reaction was swift, Bloomberg News reported. Protesters returned to the front of the governor’s mansion in San Juan’s colonial quarter — the site of protests that eventually ousted former governor Ricardo Rosselló this past summer — and even at what they believed to be the private homes of board members. Adding her voice to the street protests, Maite Oronoz Rodríguez, the head of Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court, sent a letter to the board warning of mass resignations in the island’s judiciary because of pension concerns, stating that “after a lifetime of dedication and service to Puerto Rico, our judges do not deserve to be speculating about their future based on the limited information” she said the board had made public about its plans. Despite her televised statement that she did “not support any reduction in benefits to retirees,” Vazquez nevertheless said she wanted the board to finish its work “as soon as possible” and said that the cuts now would avoid the need for larger pension cuts of up to 25 percent in the future. While Vazquez’s administration opposes cutting pensions, it won’t obstruct the progress of the federal board’s debt adjustment plan, Eli Diaz Atienza, the governor’s non-voting board representative, said during a public meeting of the board last month. Still, the administration will seek to alleviate future pension cuts through the commonwealth’s budget, Diaz Atienza said.

General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers are down to a crucial topic at the bargaining table: wages, the Wall Street Journal reported. The UAW is pressing GM to lock in more guaranteed wage increases for members during the next four-year labor contact, while company bargainers want to give workers more pay in the form of lump-sum bonuses that don’t raise their long-term labor costs. Reaching a resolution on this topic is one of the few remaining obstacles to getting a new tentative labor pact for the company’s 46,000 full-time factory workers and ending a 23-day strike that has brought the Detroit auto maker’s U.S. factories to a standstill. The conflict over how to increase factory-worker pay is especially intense in this round of talks, with both sides wary of a possible cooling in the U.S. car market and looking to secure terms on pay for the next four years. U.S. auto sales remain healthy after a record stretch, but have historically been prone to sharp downturns.

Sears has agreed to set aside $3 million to compensate the beneficiaries of retired employees who died after the bankrupt retailer canceled their life insurance benefits in March, the Chicago Tribune reported. Attorneys representing Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears Holdings and a committee of retirees presented their plan to resolve the dispute over benefits to U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Drain at a Thursday court hearing. The deal still requires official court approval, but Judge Drain told attorneys it appeared to be “a reasonable settlement.” Sears, which filed for Chapter 11 reorganization last October, ended the roughly 29,000 retired employees’ life insurance benefits shortly after selling most of its remaining assets to Transform Holdco, an entity controlled by Sears’ former CEO and largest shareholder, Edward Lampert, and his hedge fund.

Bayou Steel Group owed more than $20 million to dozens of creditors when the company declared bankruptcy on Tuesday, KLFY.com reported. One day before filing, the company closed its LaPlace, La., steel mill and laid off 376 workers. Attorneys for laid-off workers are questioning whether Bayou Steel properly complied with federal law about notifying workers about layoffs. “The employees were entitled to 60 days notice before they were terminated en masse,” said Brent Barriere, an attorney at FishmanHaygood, who is representing several laid-off workers. “That plainly did not occur.” The company did send a WARN letter to the Louisiana Workforce Commission on Monday when the layoffs happened, but Barriere described that as “too little too late.” Bayou Steel, which manufactures and transports steel beams and similar products, will permanently close Nov. 30.

Lillie Suburban Newspapers, the company that oversees several St. Paul, Minn., suburban newspapers, appeared to publish its final editions on Wednesday, TwinCities.com reported. The company encompasses eight publications that cover local Minnesota news in the east metro, including Shoreview, New Brighton, Lake Elmo and St. Anthony, as well as the East Side Review in St. Paul. The company’s financial struggles were revealed in the personal bankruptcy case of co-owner Jeffery Enright, who filed under chapter 7 in August 2018. According to a July filing in that case, the newspaper company lost $921,000 in 2018. As of summer 2018, the filing said, the company had $511,000 in assets and $2.01 million in liabilities.