Negotiators for General Electric Co. and its...

Negotiators for General Electric Co. and its two largest unions continued to bargain over a new contract for 47,000 workers, although no immediate strike was expected if an agreement wasn’t reached. Jerry Borstel, a spokesman for the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried Machine and Furniture Workers, which represents 40,000 GE employees, declined to characterize the talks or speculate about an agreement might be reached. But Borstel had said that if the talks produced no agreement by yesterday’s midnight deadline, the union was likely to give the company a 10-day strike notice. GE’s other national contract involves the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, which represents about 6,300 GE employees. The unions are seeking a moratorium on plant closings, a no-layoffs guarantee, better early retirement benefits, stronger limits on subcontracting and other job security improvements. They also want wage increases in each year of the new contract, improvements in the cost-of-living formula, increases in pension benefits, and improvements in health and hospitalization insurance.