The Collective Agreements for 2008-2010 came into force at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (parts of ChTPZ Group) in April 2008. Due to the recent unification trend, the two plants’ agreements now look almost identical and combine the best social achievements of both enterprises. The new agreements’ major advantage lies in the increased number of social benefits and guarantees, especially for female workers and the employees’ children as well as for younger employees, the Group’s press officer said to UrBC.

The female employees of both enterprises are now entitled to a wider range of medical diagnostic procedures within the framework of annual checkups, pregnant workers get nutrition subsidies, and when the baby is born, the mother gets an incidental allowance of 7,000 RUR (if this is her first child) or 10,000 RUR (if this is her second or next following child). In addition, workers whose children start school will be given gift certificates to school supplies stores.

In addition, both plants’ young employees can now get emergency subsidies (the size of an average worker’s monthly pay); every worker who gets married for the first time will be given a 10,000-ruble bonus; moreover, female workers on maternity leave will be paid a certain sum every month until their child is three years old.

The Group’s management says this breakthrough in the two companies’ social welfare packages was nothing spontaneous; on the contrary, this was a well-planned stage of a larger, long-standing program aimed at improving the quality of medical services provided to employees, at making sure their children can go to kindergartens and spend their summer holidays at some health resorts within the region as well as in the south of Russia.