OPINION OF BOARD: Section 5, Article XIII of the Agreement reads:

"SECTION 5.

When train orders or messages of record are copied by train and engine service employes at small non-telegraph stations, or at other stations where no telegraph service employes are employed, and when emergencies as defined herein exist, no payments will be made; when such emergencies do not exist, the senior qualified extra telegraph service employe on the seniority district who does not start service that calendar day or who has not already become entitled to payment under this Article XIII for that calendar day, will be paid one day at the minimum telegraphers' rate applicable to the seniority district, it being understood that one payment is to be made for each such occurrence, excepting that not more than one day is to be paid any such extra employe on any calendar day. In each instance wherein payment is due under this Section 5, the Chief Dispatcher will notify the employe entitled thereto to make claim therefor."

1. THE FACTS

On June 25, 1958, the conductors of Extra Train 2108 received a train order from the dispatcher at a phone booth located at Vroman, Colorado, which is a blind siding on Carrier's Pueblo Division where no operator is employed.

The foregoing event was made the subject of a claim instituted on July 11, 1958, wherein Petitioner requested that the senior idle telegrapher be awarded a day's pay per Article XIII, Section 5, supra. This claim was denied, by Carrier, for the given reason that there were no extra telegraph service employes idle on the Division at date of claimed violation and, therefore, no payment was authorized under the rule.

Timely, Petitioner responded to the denial by issuing an amended claim for one R. 0. Marston, the regularly assigned Telegrapher at Lamar, who was on one of his rest days at date of alleged violation. Carrier denied this claim on August 26, 1958, for the given reason that this Claimant was not a proper Claimant per Article XIII, Section 5, since such request went beyond the prescription set forth in the Article.

Petitioner argues that recovery was not limited to the idle extra telegrapher as established by Article XIII, Section 5, and that Marston is a proper Claimant of the penalty payment.

II. RESOLUTION

Article XIII, Section 5, imposes no previous restraint upon Carrier having train orders or messages copied by train and engine service employes under the circumstances described therein. The consideration for this privilege is an agreed upon penalty payment to "the senior qualified extra telegraph employe . . . ."

Penalty provisions of a contract are strictly construed; and, it is beyond question that we may not add to an agreement. Further, it is established that our jurisdiction is confined to interpreting and applying agreements in accord with the principles of contract law. We may not inject our predilictions

as to what is fair, just and equitable. Nor can we engage in speculation as to what might have been in the minds of the parties, but not evidenced in the Agreement as executed, or otherwise proven.

What Petitioner, in effect, urges us to do is to insert in the pertinent provision a clause that absent a senior qualified extra telegrapher service employe the penalty payment shall be made to an idle regularly assigned telegrapher. For the reasons set forth in the preceding paragraph, we must reject Petitioner's theory of the case and deny the claim.

FINDINGS: This Third Division of the Adjustment Board, upon thr whole record and all the evidence, finds and holds:

That the parties waived oral hearing;

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

That Carrier did not violate the Agreement.

AWARD