Please note that no duration of rest days is set forth for the extra dispatcher, and that the time specified as rest days for regularly assigned employes is substantially modified when the regular employe is assigned to relief work and that it does not apply at all when train dispatchers transfer in the exercise of seniority. This rule recognizes that changes will occur due to increase and decrease in force and for other reasons, and was designed to prevent unnecessary loss of time to employes who may change their regularly assigned jobs when a more desirable job becomes available, or when due to reduction in force they may be forced to take a less desirable job or simply a different job. Change is a recognized condition. The regularly assigned dispatcher who loses his position is not required to wait 72 hours from the time he last began work on that assignment to begin work on a new regular assignment. Is he required to wait 72 hours or some other period before beginning work as an extra employe? The rule contains no such requirement.

In the present case the service performed was not on the "rest days assigned to their position." Claimants had no position at the time involved. Their positions had been abolished. The work performed was on positions under bulletin in another office. If they assumed the conditions of the positions they were filling, the work involved was not on the rest days of such positions. Neither were the claimants in the category of extra train dispatchers who had worked in excess of five consecutive days. In the case of Dispatchers Chrisman and Martin claim covers the first date worked as extra or unassigned dispatchers, while for Dispatcher Vaughn it was the third day.

Thus it is plain that the rules do not support the claim either on the basis that the claimants on the dates involved were regularly assigned dispatchers working on an assigned rest day of their position, or that they were extra dispatchers who had worked five consecutive days as such and were working on the sixth or seventh day.

Furthermore, in the case of Dispatcher Martin, he had not worked five consecutive days even if the time worked as a regularly assigned dispatcher were counted. As shown by the Statement of Facts, he worked Saturday, February 6; Sunday, February 7; Monday, February 8; and Tuesday, February 9. He was held off Wednesday, February 10, and did not work. Therefore he worked four consecutive days as a regularly assigned train dispatcher at Elmo, was paid for one day lost and then worked at Pine Bluff February 11, the date of claim. Payment for not working is not equivalent to "working" under the terms of the rule. The penalty in second paragraph of Article 3(b) applies to extra train dispatchers:

"* * * who are required to work in excess of five (5) consecutive days * * *." (Emphasis ours.)

The Carrier respectfully submits that the rules clearly do not support any of the claims, and it requests that the claims be denied.

All data herein has been presented to representatives of the Employes.

(Exhibits not reproduced.)

OPINION OF BOARD: We are not in agreement with the contentions of Petitioners in support of this claim. The Organization bottoms the claims on the proposition that the regular assigned positions at Blum, Missouri were not in fact abolished but were transferred to Pine Bluff, Aransas.

We believe in accepting these new positions Claimants assumed the conditions attached thereto, including rest days. To rule on these facts in any other way or as Claimants request would compound confusion upon confusion.

The Agreement was not violated.

AWARD