Express files for bankruptcy

LABOR

By voting to join the United Auto Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factorywide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South. The result, in an election that ended Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference it will make beyond the Volkswagen plant. Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region nationwide. The next test for the UAW will come in May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama. — NEW YORK TIMES

AIRLINES

Delta Air Lines, the most profitable US carrier, is raising pay for nonunion employees as it gets ready for another attempt by a union to represent its flight attendants. Chief executive Ed Bastian told Delta employees Monday that the airline will boost pay for flight attendants and ground workers by 5 percent, raise the minimum wage for US workers to $19 per hour, and set aside money for merit raises. Delta said the increases affect more than 80,000 employees. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Tesla slashed a newly formed marketing team as part of companywide layoffs, reversing course from a traditional advertising push that chief executive Elon Musk greenlighted less than a year ago. The company’s “growth content” team in the United States, a group of about 40 employees, was eliminated in the ongoing job cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. There were also significant layoffs in Tesla’s design studio and staff located in Hawthorne, Calif., said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PHARMACEUTICALS

Sanofi will pay more than $100 million to settle about 4,000 lawsuits accusing the French drugmaker of failing to warn users that its Zantac heartburn medicine could cause cancer, according to people familiar with the deal. The settlement was announced earlier this month, but the amount was not made public at that time. The deal provides former Zantac users with an average of more than $25,000 per claim, said the people, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The relatively modest settlement should please Sanofi investors, who’ve worried in the past about the financial fallout of thousands of US lawsuits targeting Zantac makers such as Sanofi and GSK, which originally developed the product. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

INTERNATIONAL

Royal Mail asked UK regulators to swiftly cut back its legal obligation to deliver letters across Britain six days a week, in an effort to fend off Czech entrepreneur Daniel Kretinsky who is weighing a $3.9 billion takeover of the business. Parent company International Distributions Services on Monday published its submission to communications watchdog Ofcom that sought reform of the UK’s so-called universal service obligation. IDS could save as much as £300 million a year by cutting deliveries of second-class letters — and standard business letters such as bills — to every other weekday, the submission said. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PLASTIC

Hong Kong has long been a major producer and consumer of great food, and a great amount of plastic and Styrofoam to go with it. That’s going to change as new legislation aiming to stop the sale and distribution of Styrofoam products and single-use plastic cutlery went into effect on Monday. Under the new law, single-use cutlery such as forks, spoons, straws, and plates cannot be sold or distributed for both dine-in and takeaway customers. However, plastic food containers and cups can still be given out for takeout. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

INTERNATIONAL

Japan’s antitrust watchdog said Monday that Google must fix its advertising search restrictions affecting Yahoo in Japan. The Japan Fair Trade Commission said in a statement that its recent study of Google’s practices showed it was undermining fair competition in the advertising market. Google said in an emailed statement that it has cooperated fully with the commission’s probe and stressed the commission has not found it had outright violated anti-monopoly laws. It promised to carry out the commission’s directives to offer “valuable” search functions to Japanese users and advertisers. Yahoo has merged with Japanese social media platform Line, and Line Yahoo declined to comment. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

SOCIAL MEDIA

An Australian judge on Monday ruled that social media platform X must block every user in the world from accessing video of a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church, extending the prohibition beyond users in Australia. X Corp., the tech company rebranded by billionaire Elon Musk when he bought Twitter last year, announced last week it would fight in court Australian orders to take down posts relating to a knife attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in an Assyrian Orthodox church as a service was being streamed online on April 15. The material was geoblocked from Australia but remained available elsewhere. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

CRUISE SHIPS

Viking Holdings Ltd. and its existing shareholders are seeking to raise as much as $1.1 billion in a New York initial public offering, with the cruise operator looking to go public as the travel industry rebounds from its pandemic-era slump. The company and the investors are offering 44 million shares between $21.00 and $25.00 per ordinary share. Viking is seeking to sell 11 million shares and the shareholders a further 33 million on a combined basis. The listing would capitalize on a rebound in travel after COVID brought tourism and outdoor events to an abrupt halt. A revival in cruise bookings has sparked a boom in the sector, with shares in Royal Caribbean doubling in value over the past year while Carnival Corp. has jumped more than 50 percent. — BLOOMBERG NEWS