Moscow, March 4, 2010. CenterTelecom OJSC reports that on March 3 Vaagn Martirosyan, the company's General Director, and Vyacheslav Makrushin, Chairman of Inter-Regional Trade Union Organization of CenterTelecom, have signed a collective agreement for 2010-2012.

The signed document regulates rights and liabilities of the employer and employees including various HR issues, matters related to wages, labor conditions, social protection, working hours, and activities of CenterTelecom's trade union organization. The collective agreement is a result of a joint work held by the parties in all levels; it represents a basic instrument for solving of the company's social and labor problems. In the course of development of a new draft of the agreement the employees of CenterTelecom's branches proposed 73 amendments; 32 of those amendments were taken into consideration.

Vyacheslav Makrushin said that the new collective agreement based on experience of the past few years contains more useful information and is more practical. He added: "The agreement improves the employees' status in comparison with basic norms of Russian legislation. It is related to the corporate social programs which have been developed jointly by representatives of the employer and employees. Moreover a Clause "About Development of Employees' Potential" has been amended; according to the amended clause a program for young specialists will be developed in 2010. This program shall help the young specialists to take an active part in the company's professional and social life."

After discussion of the new draft of the collective agreement CenterTelecom's trade union and management came to a decision to sign the agreement for 2010-2012.

Vaagn Martirosyan in his comments on the signed document pointed out that despite successful results of the company for 2009 and the fact that CenterTelecom pays special attention to its personnel's material well being the wages' growth is driven by an increase in productivity. He added: "Owing to our efforts aimed at business optimization we now can count on considerable increase in profit per employee, and consequently on increase of average wages. Our plans in this field are ambitious and doable. We all have to do all our best in order to fulfill them."