agreement, under the provisions of Rule 26 of the agreement the Organization is precluded from asserting that any violation of the agreement existed more than sixty days prior to December 17, 1951.

All data in support of carrier's position have been submitted to the employes and made a part of this dispute.

OPINION OF BOARD: In this docket we are required to apply the governing rules and precedent awards, to the factual situation existing at the Decatur, Illinois freight house of the Carrier, when in 1951, an alteration was done by outside contract, which the Maintenance of Way employes now claim to have been their work.

Rules 1, 2 26 (a) and (b), rate sheets, a labor treaty, and very many awards have been cited to the Board. Stripped of all collateral issues our principal question is: was the work done a major alteration which the claimants were not qualified to do?

The Brotherhood would minimize the work done and the Carrier would detail the facts into a larger project. We are in some doubt concerning .the size of the job, the length of time necessary to complete it, the fineness of the finished product, and the cost of the work.

We must draw our conclusions from the facts shown in the docket. Accordingly we believe that actually this is a border line case. There is agreement on one fact at least. A ware-room, presumably rough finished, was converted into offices by relining the area, together with new floors, wiring, plumbing and heating.

Undoubtedly some of the details of the job were within the skills of the claiming employes but other requirements such as the plastering and plumbing were beyond their abilities.

Both the Carrier and the Organization cite Award 2819 (Shake) as follows:

"Manifestly, a determination as to whether contracted work comes within the scope of the Agreement must be resolved from a consideration of the character of work as a whole, and not by breaking it down into all of its component parts. In other words, a carrier may not be precluded from contracting a project for which it does not possess and may not be reasonably expected to acquire the necessary skilled help and equipment merely because som eisolated and incidental part of the work contemplated, if disassociated from the whole, would come within the scope of the Agreement. It would be difficult, indeed, to conceive of any proper subject of an independent contract that would not embrace some elements of work which, standing alone, would come within the purview of the Scope Rule:'

The record before us discloses that there had been a previous conflict at Decatur in 1950 wherein a strike was threatened by the local building trades group because an attempt was made to use company electricians while a contracted job was in progress. It is commonly known that building trades will not work with others outside their group. We are unable to say whether the particular work here present, was susceptible of division so that the rough work could be assigned to the B&B workers and the finish work could have been held back till a later day to be done by the more skilled crafts of plumbers, plasterers, etc. In any event we should not substitute our judgment for that of management. We can only determine whether the Carrier's management was warranted in reaching the decision to contract the work.

We hold that the Carrier was so warranted in the present instance, while remembering that we have already declared this to have been a borderline case.

AWARD