By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

A NEW industrial agreement between the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) and the Bahamas Communications & Public Officers Union (BCPOU) includes salary increases and lump sum payments.

Officials said the four-year agreement, signed yesterday, came after heated negotiations that threatened to prevent a deal.

BTC’s director of peoples K Darron Turnquest said the new agreement advances efforts to align staff benefits, enhance performance management practices, review salary bands of senior associates, and improve various allowances for employees.

He said the agreement includes a ten percent salary increase for senior associates and a lump sum payment in year one that is expected to be paid out on Monday.

 He said salary-based increases of three percent would come into effect in year two, four percent in year three, and three percent in year four for all staff within the salary bands.

 BCPOU president Sherry Benjamin Benjamin said the previous industrial agreement expired in March 2023. Negotiations for a new one started in August and ran into a stalemate “sometime in early December”, prompting an intervention from Minister of Labour and Public Service Pia Glover-Rolle and Director of Labour Howard Thompson, which was unsuccessful.

“Most presidents would say they have a difficulty trying to sign one agreement,” she said. “This is our third agreement with BTC in a three-year period, so I think that is really commendable and that speaks to the level of the relationship we had.”