PARTIES TO DISPUTE:



DISPUTE.-


FINDINGS.-The third Division of the Adjustment Board, upon the whole record and all the evidence, finds that:

The carrier and the employee involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employee 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.

The parties to said dispute were given due notice of hearing thereon.

As result of a deadlock, Lloyd K. Garrison was called in as Referee to sit with this Division as a member thereof.

An agreement dated October 1928 is in effect between the parties.

Mr. Mangram, agent-telegrapher at St. Anne, Illinois, was granted a leave of absence beginning December 1, 1934. A relief agent reported at the station at 7: 30 A. M. on the morning of December 1st and Mangram was with him for 4 bours, or until 11:30 A. M. The claim on behalf of Mangram for pay for these 4 hours is based upon Rule 32 of the agreement between the parties, reading in part as follows:



The question in this case is whether or not Mangram made a "detailed com
plete check" within the meaning of the rule. It is claimed that he did, but
the evidence is scanty and amounts to little more than the statement that be
cause he was there on the first of the month when monthly reports are due he
must have made a complete detailed check. The relief agent was an experi
enced man who bad worked at that station before, and there was a cashier at
the station in charge of company funds and making necessary cash reports over
the signature of the agent. There Is nothing tangible in the evidence to show
what the relief agent did on the morning of December 1st or what the cashier
did or what Mangram did, outside of the statement by the employees that
Mangram's preparation of the monthly reports "consumed a considerable portion
of the 4 hours involved."

But the making of these reports was part of his regular duties, and the time spent on them cannot be said to have been the equivalent of making a detailed complete check in connection with the taking over of the work by the relief agent. The making of the reports may have required some checking of accounts, but If so the checking of the accounts was not for the purpose of turning over





the station to the relief men under Rule 32. For the latter purpose Mangram no doubt checked the amount of cash on hand, the number of tickets, and perbaps some other items, but these are matters which might have been done very quickly and which for all that appears from the record may have occupied but a few minutes' time.

Rule 32 requires Hot merely a check of accounts but a detailed check and a complete check, and, without attempting to define the exact scope of the rule, we think it calls for something more substantial and thoroughgoing than anything that appears from the record to have been done in this case. It is worth noting that the general chairman in it letter to the carrier, dated January 24 1935, stated in substance that Mangram put in his time on the monthly report and that while lie was doing this "the relief operator handled the regular routine work." It is also worth noting that the company has a set of instructions to be observed by agents when making transfer of accounts to relief agents in the absence of a traveling auditor; that these instructions enumerate various things to be done by the outgoing agent and require the incoming agent to check these matters over jointly with the outgoing agent and to fill out a report attached to the instructions; that the instructions require one copy of the report to be kept by each of the agents, one to be pasted in the cashbook, and an original mailed to the Comptroller in Chicago; and that no such report was mailed nor was a copy pasted in the cashbook. Under all of these circumstances we do not think the evidence sustains the claim.


Claim denied.
By Order of Third Division:

Attest:
                        H. A. JOHNSON, &oretary.


Dated at Chicago, Illinois, this 9th day of April 1938.