NATIONAL RAILROAD ADJUSTMENT BOARD
PARTIES TO DISPUTE:
BROTHERHOOD OF RAILWAY AND STEAMSHIP CLERKS,
FREIGHT HANDLERS, EXPRESS AND STATION EMPLOYES
MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
STATEMENT OF CLAIM: Claim of the System Committee of the
Brotherhood (GL-4832) that:
1. Carrier violated the Clerks' Agreement when, effective Monday, August 31, 1959, it removed from under the scope and operation
of the Clerks' Agreement, a part of the station platform work, consisting of handling the U. S. mail and express off and on passenger
trains Nos. 25 and 32, at Gordon, Arkansas, and required Telegraph
Operators, employes of another craft and class, covered by another
Agreement, to perform that work, which was in violation of Rules
1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 45 and other related rules of the Clerks' Agreement;
2. Carrier shall be required to compensate Cashier Fay Marshall
for a minimum call of two hours at the punitive rate of $3.5775 per
hour, amount $7.16 for each day, August 31, 1959, through October 2,
1959, total 33 days, amount $236.28;
3. Carrier shall be required to compensate Cashier Fay Marshall,
his successor or successors, a minimum call of two hours at the
punitive rate for each date subsequent to October 2, 1959, until the
violation is discontinued.
EMPLOYES' STATEMENT OF FACTS: Gordon, Arkansas is located
on the Carrier's Arkansas Operating Division, approximately eighty miles
south and west of Little Rock, Arkansas.
For many years the Carrier had maintained a clerical force at the
Passenger Station, and also at the Freight and Yard Office at Gordon,
Arkansas.
The clerical force in the Ticket Office at Gordon, Arkansas at the time
of the Mediation Wage Agreement, November 1, 1928, consisted of:
Ill
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The Carrier has returned the work belonging to the employes coming
within the scope of the Clerks' Agreement when it returned the handling of
the baggage to the Clerks. U. S. mail is now being handled by clerks at Gurdon.
This was in keeping with Award No. 14 of Special Board of Adjustment No.
239. The Employes involved in this dispute do not have any right to perform
the work in question and the Carrier respectfully requests that the Board
deny the claim.
(Exhibits not reproduced.)
OPINION OF BOARD:
Effective August 31, 1959, Carrier assigned
Telegraph Operators to a part of the station platform work at Gordon,
Arkansas. The work was handling U. S. mail and express off and on certain
passenger trains. Petitioner claims the work had been exclusively performed
by Clerks and was within the scope of the Clerks' Agreement; and, the transfer of the work to Telegraph Operators violated the Agreement.
The evidence establishes that Clerks had exclusively performed the work
involved from 1893 to May, 1958. In May, 1958 Carrier assigned some of this
work, at Gurdon, to Telegraph Operators. Clerks filed a claim which was
disposed of by Special Board of Adjustment No. 239, Award No. 14, issued
June 30, 1959.
In Award No. 14, the Special Board said:
. . . This claim has to do primarily with handling U. S. mail,
baggage and express off and on trucks and passenger trains; checking,
separating, and delivering same; lining it up for loading on other
trucks or passenger trains for outbound dispatch; and, the janitor
work in and about the passenger station.
. it appears reasonably certain that the work here in dispute
has been performed historically and traditionally down
through the
years by the clerical forces at Gordon. It is the work of Clerks and
should not have been removed from the Clerks' Agreement without
their consent."
The Special Board found that the transfer of the work to Telegrapher
Operators violated the Clerks' Agreement; and, it went on to say:
"The violation of the contract will be remedied by returning the
station platform work at Gordon to those employes entitled thereto
under the Clerks' Agreement, and that will be the order of this Board."
We find upon the basis of the record in the instant case that the work
involved has been exclusively performed by Clerks and therefore comes within
the scope provision of the Clerks' Agreement. That a transfer of the work by
Carrier, to other crafts or classes of employes violated the Agreement stands
res judicata. Award No. 14, supra. We will sustain the claim.
FINDINGS: The Third Division of the Adjustment Board, upon the whole
record and all the evidence, finds and holds:
That the parties waived oral hearing;
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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 violated the Clerks' Agreement.
AWARD
Claim sustained.
NATIONAL RAILROAD ADJUSTMENT BOARD
By Order of THIRD DIVISION
ATTEST: S. H. Schulty
Executive Secretary
Dated at Chicago, Illinois this 28th day of May 1964.