OPINION OF BOARD: The Claimants are Signalmen holding seniority as such on the division in which they sought, by reason of reduction in force, to displace other signalmen their juniors in seniority.

Upon application of Claimants for assignment to the positions held by the junior signalmen, Carrier required them to give a practical demonstration of their ability to fill the positions which they desired to fill. The right to require such demonstration is claimed by the Carrier to be provided for in Article 13, Section 4(a) of the Agreement.

Claimants assert the right to displace under Article 4, Section 8(b), and further contend that such right of displacement is limited in its operation when forces are reduced or positions abolished only to seniority classes and date of seniority as fixed by Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Article 4 of the Agreement. We cannot agree to such construction as claimed by Claimants. While Article 4, Section 8(b) authorizes the exercising of seniority, it nowhere attempts to fix the effectiveness of the seniority sought to be exercised.

Upon the other hand, Article 8, Section 4 (a), limits the effectiveness of seniority to the extent of requiring a demonstration of an applicant's ability in the event of a reasonable doubt as to his qualifications. Such a provisions in labor agreements is not new nor novel. Similar provisions are the rule rather than the exception in such agreements. We instance Section 18 a() of Article 4 of the agreement here where assignments to various positions therein named are based upon "ability, fitness and seniority; ability and fitness being sufficient, seniority shall govern."

The exercising of the privilege of requiring a practical demonstration by the Carrier is in no sense a disqualification of the applicant. Disqualification arises only after a practical test shows an applicant to lack the ability to perform the work required by the position.

From the wide scope of work required of signalmen on a property of the magnitude of Carrier's, it is entirely possible that a signalman might spent an entire lifetime in one phase cf signalman's work and have no experience at all in some other phase of such work.

And this is true even though the signalman who had no experience in the one phase of such work holds highest seniority in the entire class. Classification of an entire craft, encompassing the numerous subdivisions must, in a measure, he somewhat arbitrary rather than exast. To guard against such. situations, limitations upon the effectiveness of such classification are set up by agreements.

From the record it appears that claimants had spent practically all their time doing line work, such as setting poles, cross-arms and installing line wire and serial cable in connection with telegraph and telephone communication systems. These duties did not include duties such as those assigned to the junior employes they sought to displace. Moreover, on the day that Carrier asked claimants to take the test the gang to which they were asking to be assigned was located at the headquarters of the gang from which they had been relieved. No great inconvenience would have been experienced by claimants by proceeding to where the claimed crew positions were being performed and there demonstrating their fitness for the positions. Under such circumstances we cannot say that Carrier acted arbitrarily in asking for the demonstration after a reasonable doubt could well exist as to fitness of claimants under all the circumstances.

FINDINGS: The Third Division of the Adjustment Board, after giving the parties to this dispute due notice of hearing thereon, and upon the whole record and all the evidence, finds and holds:

That the Carrier and the Employes involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employes within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act, as approved .Tune 21, 1934;

That no rule of the Agreement is violated.

AWARD