BROTHERHOOD OF RAILWAY AND STEAMSHIP CLERKS,
FREIGHT HANDLERS, EXPRESS AND STATION EMPLOYES
STATEMENT OF CLAIM: Claim of the System Committee that the work of carrying store department mail between Carrier's Oakland Store and Carrier's Oakland Passenger Station is work coming within the scope and
operation of the Clerks' Agreement, that the action of the Railroad in removing this work from employes holding seniority rights on the Store Department roster constitutes a violation of the Clerks' Agreement and that all employes adversely affected by reason of this violation shall be compensated for all wage loss sustained subsequent to July 31, 1946.
EMPLOYES' STATEMENT OF FACTS: Carrier's Oakland Store is located approximately two miles from its Oakland Passenger Station. For many years, it has been the practice for an employe holding seniority rights under the Store Department roster to carry mail originating at the Store Department to Oakland Passenger Station. On or about August 1, 1946, performance of this work was assigned to employes holding no seniority rights on Store Department roster.
POSITION OF EMPLOYES, The following rules are cited from agreement bearing effective date of December 16, 1943:
POSITION OF CARRIER: There is nothing in the Schedule which accords to any clerk, or group of clerks, the exclusive right to handle railroad mail. It can be handled via United States Postal Service or by any class of railroad employes. At stations it is handled by Agents, Telegraphers and/or Clerks; on the trains it is handled by Train Baggagemen or Express Messengers; it is handled by Trainmen in cabooses of freight trains; it is delivered to section, extra gangs and B&B gangs, etc., by Roadmasters or B&B Supervisors. In fact, there is hardly a railroad employe, who, at some time, does not handle railroad mail.
In large General office buildings it is customary to have a Central Mail Room from which mail is distributed by messengers to the many offices in the building, irrespective of the seniority roster, and, similarly, mail is picked up in the numerous offices and taken to the Mail Room by mail room messenger.
Carrier contends that in having the messenger at Oakland handle the Store Department railroad mail in the same manner as the mail is handled between the offices of the several other departments and passenger station, no provisions of the Schedule were violated and we urge that you deny the claim of the employes.
OPINION OF BOARD: The facts are not in dispute. For many years an employe holding seniority under the Store Department roster carried Store Department mail to and from the Oakland Passenger Station, a distance of more than one mile. On August 1, 1946, this work was assigned to employes holding no seniority rights on the Store Department roster. The Organization contends that this is a violation of Rule 28 of the current Agreement providing in part:
demned the transferring of work from one seniority district to another as a violation of the seniority rights of the employes in the district from which the work is taken. Awards 1808, 3746, 3064.
We do not here say that the handling of mail is work belonging exclusively to Store Department employes. What we do say is that work having been assigned for a long period of time to employes under the Store Department, it being a seniority district of itself, such work cannot be assigned to an employe of another seniority district except by negotiation and agreement.
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 ail 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 June 21, 1934;
That this Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein; and