By LEDEDRA MARCHE

Senior FN Reporter

With only a tentative agreement on the table between the union and the power company and no date set yet for the formal signing, lawyers for both sides are reportedly still perusing the contract.

Commonwealth Electrical Workers Union President Keith Knowles, in an interview with The Freeport News, said the lawyers are still ensuring that the language of the agreement in principle is correct.

Exactly one month ago, CEWU executives revealed via a press conference that there were still some unresolved issues, despite them having the tentative agreement with executives of the Grand Bahama Power Company.

Both parties have been engaged in negotiations for a new five-year contract for three years and while they have only come to some sort of agreement last month, the agreement expires in 2009.

There is a clause, however, that allows the existing contract to remain until a new contract is signed.

"There are some outstanding issues that we would like to see cleared up before we actually have the official signing," Knowles said.

Among those issues is the matter of some 22 former employees of the power company who the union says are entitled to the same benefits of the present employees as they were employed there over the last three years which the contract covers.

Some, Knowles said, were even employed up until the tentative agreement was signed off on and have either since resigned, were terminated or retired.

The CEWU maintains that group of individuals should be treated the same as the present employees and it is simply a matter of the company agreeing to pay them off.

"Moving forward you want to try and get all of the issues out of the way in order to foster good industrial relations and bring the relationship back to the workplace," the union president said.

Until both sides are satisfied with the language of the contract, Knowles said a date for the formal signing will not be set.

The signing, he revealed, all depends on how quickly the lawyers complete the process and both parties come to an agreement on those outstanding issues.

While all of the terms and benefits of the tentative agreement have not been disclosed by either party, the power company did reveal during negotiations that it provides benefits, including Christmas bonuses, performance bonuses, a pension plan (100 percent contributed by GBPC), medical insurance (65 percent paid by GBPC), paid vacation for four weeks after only five years of service, a savings plan (company matches 75 percent of employee contribution), tuition contribution for children of employees between the ages of four years and 18 years of age (55 percent, uniform and book allowance of 200 per child), and discount on employees' residential power by 25 percent.

It was also proposing a 12 percent lump sum agreement upon signing, a five percent salary increase on the first day of the month following the signing and 14 percent increase over the next four years.