EJIIPLOYES STATEMENT OF FACTS: Claimant is regularly employed by the Southern Pacific Company (Pacific Lines) hereinafter referred to as Carrier, as a Machinist in Carrier's Sacramento General Shops, with workweek of Monday thru Friday, rest days Saturday and Sunday.
Claimant's birthday was Thursday, August 2:5, 1966, a vacation day of his scheduled vacation period, for which he was paid a day's vacation pay. However, Carrier declined to allow him birthday holiday compensation for the day, Thursday, August 25, 1966.
Claim was filed with the proper officer of the Carrier under date of September 18, 1966, contending that claimant was entitled to eight (8) hours Birthday Holiday compensation for his birthday, August 25th, in addition to vacation pay received for that day, and claim was subsequently handled up to and including the highest Carrier officer designated to handle such claims, all of whom declined to make satisfactory adjustment.
The Agreement effective April 16, 1942 as subsequently amended by the February 4, 1965 Agreement, is controlling.
POSITION OF EMPLOYEES: It is respectfully submitted that Carrier erred when it failed and declined to allow claimant eight (8) hours birthday holiday compensation for his birthday, August 25, 1966, in addition to vacation pay allowed for the day.
FINDINGS: The Second Division of the Adjustment Board, upon the whole record and all the evidence, finds that:
The carrier or carriers and the employe or employes involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employe within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act as approved June 21, 1934.
This Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein.
Claimant was assigned to position of Machinist at Carrier's General Shops at Sacramento, California, hours 7:00 A.M.-3:00 P.M. (30-minute lunch period), rest days, Saturday, Sunday and Holidays. He was scheduled for and observed his vacation August 15 to 26, inclusive.
Carrier denied the claim at issue for the assigned reason that Cha::iiant was compensated eight (8) hours at the straight-time rate of pay Auaust 25. scheduled vacation day that was also his birthday.
The attempt in this and related Dockets to associate the Birthday- Hc,iiday Agreement with the Vacation Agreement gives rise to the fundamental issue in all these disputes over the Carrier's refusals to honor claims for an additional 8-hour day, at the pro rata rate of pay, for a birthday -11oli clay which falls on a workday of the individual employe's work-week, because that day was paid for at the pro rata rate to compensate for hi= earned vacation.
The Vacation Agreement of December 17, 1941 has withstood the rigors of time and change very well and perhaps that is some reason v-1hy the parties, in negotiating amendments to Article I of the Vacation Agreement of December 17, 1941, as amended by the Agreement of August 21, 1954 and the Agreement of August 19, 1960, at the same time they negotiated amendments to Article II-Holidays, of the Agreement of August 21, 1954, as amended by the Agreement of August 19, 1960, very astutely found and used words in Section 6 as an addition to Article II, which, in our studied opinion, leave no doubt that the parties contracted on the subject of birthdayholiday with the object and purpose in mind that the Vacation Agreement should not serve as a bar to the individual employe's full enjoyment of his special holiday, without finding the need to write exceptions into either Article II or Article III of the February 4, 1965 Mediation A--reement. We have an expression from the illustrious Wayne L. Morse to back us up in that opinion.
Professor Morse, a former United States Senator, and a recognized authority in labor-management relations, is closer than anyone else to the Vacation Agreement. As Chairman of the President's 1941 Emergency Board, he wrote the vacation section of the Board's report of November :5, 1941, mediated the Washington settlement of December 1, 1941, also wrote those sections of the Vacation Agreement of December 17, 1941, which the parties had previously failed to agree upon in negotiations, and then was called in on July 30, 1942 to referee disputes that had arisen over the meaning and intent of the Agreement that he had fushioned. His formula for the settlement of disputes involving the Vacation Agreement is still alive and should be found to be of continuing interest for present day use.
Referee Morse says in his public award, in connection with the Vacation Agreement of December 17, 1941, for purposes of interpreting the same, that:
We accept, in this and related dockets, what Referee Morse has said ahoat hi, interpretation of the Vacation Agreement and we adopt his general point of view that the interpretation of the Vacation Agreement by this Division should not do volence to the purposes of said Agreement, nor produce an unfair, inequitable, and unreasonable result.
NVe find, therefore, that the denial of claims for an additional eight hour day at the pro rata rate of pay for a birthday-holiday which falls on a Workday of the individual employe's workweek, because the same day had been paid for to compensate as earned vacation, would be to use the Vacation Agreement of December 17, 1941, as amended, to do violence to the intention of the parties who negotiated Article II, Section 6 of the February 1, 196>5 Agreement and, therefore, would produce an unfair, inequitable and unreasonable result.
We have noted, without attaching any importance to Carrier's reference, in its submission, to the May 19, 1966 Notice, served by System Federatioal No. 1l-1, under the Railway Labor Act, as amended, in which the Employes proposed and all paid holidays falling within a vacation period be granted by extending the vacation period accordingly, etc.
We are confident that Carrier recognizes as distinction between the observance of a paid holiday as both a day paid for and as an additional day of vacation, as opposed to the extra pay which is in contention in this Docket.
Carrier also devotes a part of its submission to the citation and discussion of the Division's awards which sustain its position in this Docket. The reason why these cited awards do not impress us favorably at this time