Daily Pulse: Jack Gives Back, McMuffins Save the Day, Karma for Pharma

One down... United Auto Workers have reached a deal with Fiat Chrysler. 77% of union members at Fiat Chrysler's US factories voted in favor of the new four-year contract, which gives all employees raises and eliminates a despised two-tier pay structure. The contract covers 40,000 workers at 23 factories. Now the union is looking at contracts with Ford and GM. 

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Dorsey's putting his money where his mouth is. Jack has been stirring things up since he's been back at Twitter: laying off 8% of the company, apologizing to outside developers, and now giving part of his shares back to employees. Dorsey announced on Twitter (duh) that he's putting a third of his stock—i.e., 1% of the company—back into the employee equity pool. He says of the move:

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#Quote

 "I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small."

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Bringing new meaning to the term 'conscious capitalism': Turing Pharmaceuticals, and its CEO Martin Shkreli, recently came under fire for its 5,000% price hike of the drug Daraprim, used by cancer and AIDS patients to treat toxoplasmosis. A highly specialized drug, Daraprim was the only option for people suffering this parasitic infection—until now. Where Turing bumped the price per pill up to $750, a company called Imprimis Pharmaceuticals is charging a scant $0.99, or $99 for a 100-pill bottle, for its version of the medication. The company's CEO, Mark Baum, said of the Daraprim debacle: "I've served this patient population for a long time, and when I see a company do this … it just shocks the conscience." He also says that, even with the lower price, they'll still make a "tremendous profit."

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Get out your calculators. Google (er, Alphabet) reported strong earnings yesterday: profits were up almost 50% in Q3, with growth coming primarily from mobile search and YouTube. Alphabet also got a boost in after-hours trading, partly because it announced an upcoming share buy-back: the board approved plans to buy back $5,099,019,513.59 shares starting in the fourth quarter. Why the oddly specific number? It's a billion times the square root of 26, the number of letters in the alphabet. Oh, brother. 

Amazon and Microsoft also had successful earnings reports yesterday, largely due to the successes of their competing cloud services. Cloud computing is Amazon's fastest growing business.

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People must really like breakfast. McDonald's shares hit an all-time high after yesterday's earnings report, in which CEO Steve Easterbrook announced an increase in sales that ended six straight quarters of dismal results. Shares jumped more than 8%, to a record $110.88. It looks like Easterbrook's turnaround plan is starting to work—and people really like their Egg McMuffins.

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On today's earnings agenda: Procter & Gamble, American Airlines, Thomson Reuters, Royal Caribbean, Volvo, and more. 

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What you may have missed — and really should read:

• Drone delivery could begin within months, says Aaref Hilaly—if the government gets out of the way.
• "To my son, cable TV was YouTube, but broken." A five-year-old's response to commercials
• Pinterest's Tracy Chou on "the uncomfortable state of being Asian in tech" and the myth of the 'model minority'
• When CEOs get sick, how should companies respond? An analysis of United and Goldman Sachs

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• Missed the last update? Then check out 'Google Makes Nice with Europe, Instagram's Itsy-Bitsy Video, Siri — Am I Driving?'
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Cover photo: I guess we're not the only ones obsessed with pumpkins in the fall. This lioness at the Fort Worth Zoo isn't interested in your PSL, though—she goes straight for the whole thing.