the meals. The claim here presented is not in accordance with the Agreement, and should be declined.
OPINION OF BOARD: This is a claim for meal expenses incurred during the time Road Carpenter J. Q. Wiygul and Road Carpenter Helper H. H. Harrison allege they were temporarily away from their assigned headquarters. They state that they are entitled to reimbursement for food expenditures in accordance with Rule 13 (c), which provides as follows:
Carrier denies that Rule 13 (c) is applicable in this dispute because it maintains that Claimants were not taken away from their camp outfits to perform work demanding variable hours. It argues further that a camp car, as contemplated under Rule 18, was furnished with a stove and cooking utensils.
In order to determine which rule is applicable, we must ascertain from the record whether the employes were temporarily taken away from their headquarters. When Carrier bulletined the position, it defined headquarters in the following statement:
Consequently, when Claimants Wiygul and Harrison, the successful applicants for the bulletined position, worked elsewhere than the designated headquarters in Mobile, Alabama, during the period from September 15 through October 30, 1959, they were temporarily taken away from their headquarters. Rule 13 (a) and (c), which applies to Claimants temporarily taken away from their assigned headquarters, is, therefore, applicable.
Although Carrier provided facilities for cooking meals, with headquarters still, at Mobile, it was obligated under Rule 13 to furnish meals at its expense to employes while they were temporarily away from their assigned headquarters. If Carrier desired to change Claimants' headquarters from Mobile, it could have announced this arrangement, as it later actually did, by issuing a new bulletin abolishing the Mobile headquarters and establishing new headquarters.
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 all 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; 12794-8 J! 7