DETROIT – General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers early Wednesday morning announced a tentative agreement on a new national contract for about 74,000 U.S. auto workers that includes a historic restructuring of GM’s obligations for UAW retiree health care and sets up a mechanism for GM to buyout many of its current workers and replace them with new employees at lower wages.

The tentative pact means UAW workers, who went on strike at all of GM’s U.S. plants Monday, should start coming back to work Wednesday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The tentative pact, which still must be ratified by UAW-GM members, marks a turning point in a nearly 30-year struggle by the UAW and the three Detroit auto giants to outrun forces of global competition that have rendered their traditional business model obsolete.

In effect, the new agreement allows GM to cap and move off its books to an independent trust a more than $50 billion debt owed to the UAW for retiree health care that the company cannot pay and remain viable. How much GM will contribute to that fund, known as a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association or VEBA, wasn’t clear Wednesday. But the total value could be as much as $35 billion, people familiar with the bargaining process said.

In return, the UAW has received commitments from GM that it will invest in UAW represented factories in the U.S., and certain other improvements to retirement benefits. But the proposed contract is understood to give GM the tools to buy out thousands more long-serving production and support workers, who currently earn about $70 an hour in wages and benefits, and replace them with new workers who will earn far less.

Over time, the new UAW contract could allow GM to significantly narrow a roughly $25 to $30 an hour labor cost gap between its unionized U.S. operations and non-union U.S. auto plants run by Toyota Motor Corp. and other Asian and European auto makers. The new contract appears to ratify what has for several years been the reality in the U.S. auto industry: that Toyota, not GM or the UAW, now sets the pattern for auto industry labor costs in the U.S. economy.

The new GM contract would over time move UAW workers closer to the wage and benefit schemes used by non-union auto workers at plants run by Asian and European auto makers in the southern U.S.

GM and UAW officials refused to discuss details of the pact Wednesday. GM said in a statement the tentative contract “paves the way for GM to significantly improve its manufacturing competitiveness, providing the basis for maintaining and strengthening its core manufacturing base in the United States.”

In a radio interview about three hours following the 4 a.m. announcement of the agreement, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said the VEBA trust meant UAW members are “going to be secure in their retiree benefits.” Gettelfinger acknowledged the move to shift responsibility for retiree health care to an independent trust could spark debate among UAW members worried that the trust won’t be adequately funded, and said he welcomes that debate and said the trust will be adequate to pay benefits for “80 years.”

Gettelfinger said in the same interview with Detroit radio station WJR morning host Paul W. Smith that the UAW will turn quickly to reach agreements with Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC patterned on the GM pact.

To help win Gettelfinger’s approval, and to help him sell the contract to UAW members, GM indicated it will give the union commitments for substantial investment in plants in the U.S. — many of those tied to new cars, trucks, engines and transmissions the company has on the drawing board, according to people familiar with the process.

The creation of an independent trust to take over some $51 billion owed to GM-UAW retirees for health care would represent a significant boost for GM, which has had its credit ratings knocked down to junk ratings in part because of concerns about the huge debt, which is more than double GM’s current market capitalization. If Ford and Chrysler win the same agreement, they too would benefit from having the burden of funding open ended retiree health care obligations, which add hundreds of dollars to the cost of each vehicle built in the U.S.

GM had by far the largest retiree health care burden, which was equivalent to more than double GM’s market capitalization as of Tuesday. The escalating debt to retirees, and $12 billion in losses during the past two years, led some analysts to predict that GM might someday be forced to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. GM executives consistently dismissed such speculation, but acknowledged that the company couldn’t regain full competitiveness in North America without a fundamental change in its labor cost structure.

GM and its shareholders will pay a huge price for the retiree health care restructuring.

At 70 cents on the dollar, the fund would be worth in excess of $35 billion. GM is expected to fund the VEBA with a combination of cash and securities. The auto maker has been building up cash for more than a year in anticipation of a VEBA deal, selling key assets such as a 51 percent stake in its finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp., and more recently, the profitable Allison Transmission unit.

Among the other key elements of the new deal that took shape late Tuesday and early Wednesday were substantial changes to the much-maligned Jobs Bank, a program that allowed unemployed UAW members to receive full pay for years without working. The JOBS Bank will still exist, but it’s expected to be changed so that there will be few people sitting idle in the Jobs Bank for any length of time, according to people familiar with the process.

Other elements, as of late Tuesday night, included: new-hire rates for some new UAW members brought into GM. The rate would probably be far less — maybe even half — the current wage-and-compensation package given to UAW-GM members, said these people. These lower rates would be limited to new UAW hires that work in nonproduction jobs, such as janitorial, landscaping and security.

GM would be able to negotiate a diversion on cost-of-living adjustments and increased cost-sharing on health care for active workers. Another potentially big gain for GM if the deal is approved: no wage increases during the life of the contract.

There will likely be a signing bonus for workers, plus lump-sum bonuses of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent of annual pay over the last three years of the deal, people familiar with the process said late Tuesday. It wasn’t clear early Wednesday if any of these provisions had been altered in last minute bargaining.

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