On 18th November 2005 a conference of the employees of the united company  JSC North-West Telecom took place in St. Petersburg  to approve  the Collective Agreement for the years 2006 –2008, which is the basic legal document defining the social and employment relationships of the employees and the employer.

Chief executive officer V.A. Akulich told the delegates of the conference about the plans and objectives of the company team for the social and economic development of the Company.                

Guided bythe principlesof social partnership, the trade union actively supports the efforts of the Administration to ensure stability in the work of the enterprise.  V.N. Maleshko, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Trade Unionof RF Telecommunication Employees for the North-westernFederal District, a member of the standing commission for holding collective talks, spoke about the importanceof social partnership.

Control over the fulfillment of the Collective Agreement and all changes in the Collective Agreement have been monitored by the trade unions acting as the connecting link between the employees and the employer, therefore, O.V. Grib, Chairman of the Council of the Chairpersons of the Councils of the Chairpersons of Primary Trade UnionOrganizations of OJSC NWT,delivered a report on preliminaryresults of the current Collective Agreement.

The Collective Agreement, which has been made up taking into accountthe proposals and comments of Company's branches, sets fortha list of socialguarantees and privileges granted to all employees of the Company.     

NWT is the first of the interregional companiesof the Svyazinvestholding, in which a unified collective agreement was adopted in 2003. The distinguishing feature of the Collective Agreement for 2006-2008 is that it is adopted for a period of three years (the previous agreement covered a period of 2 years), and, therefore, guarantees socialstability in the working team for the time when both the entire telecommunications industry and the company undergo serious changes. The Collective Agreement is one for all employees of the Companyresiding in different RF entities.

The Collective Agreement guarantees the construction of an efficientsystem of socialsecurity and facilitates the inflow of highly skilled specialists to the company, reduces the outflow of workers and is the basis for successful operation of the Company. In the unanimous opinion of the Company's management and delegates of the conference, the signing of the Collective Agreement is an importantevent in the life of the enterprise.