OTTAWA – A tentative agreement has been reached between the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) and Expertech which will see the installation and maintenance company remain open.
As long as union members ratify the agreement, the closing procedure announced by the company last week would stop. Negotiations were carried out over the weekend.
Ratification meetings will be held over the next few days and CEP will recommend acceptance of the tentative agreement. No information on the terms of the agreement will be disclosed before the ratification meetings take place, said the press release.
Expertech gets virtually all of its business from Bell Canada, and the telco informed the company in 2006 that it could not continue to pay the higher rates Expertech commanded – even if Bell was the primary shareholder of the technical firm.
The parties to this agreement have been involved in negotiations to renew the collective agreement since last fall. At the beginning of last week, when workers had rejected the Employer’s offer for the second time, Expertech announced and initiated the complete closing down of the company.
