OPINION OF BOARD: At issue is whether or not Carrier violated any of its Agreements with Petitioner when it required Claimant J. H. Davis, the regularly assigned agent at Walford, Pennsylvania to work a part of each of several days at the agency at Wampum, Pennsylvania.
We have carefully considered all of the claimed violations of various sections of the effective agreements between the parties. There is language in such agreements from which an inference might be drawn that Carrier should have had someone else available to fill in at Wampum. Yet, the specific language of Regulation 4-M-1 is obviously meant to cover a situation such as that with which we are here concerned. Such rule provides the method of paying "A regularly assigned employe who is required to work temporarily in a position other than his regular position . . .
Such is our case here, an identical one in principle with that we faced in our decision resulting in Award No. 6291. We reaffirm the soundness of such decision, and shall adhere to it. Finding no violation of any Agreement between the parties, we must deny the claim.
FINDINGS: The Third Division of the Adjustment Board, 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;
That this Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein; and
Awards which tend to perpetuate the error of prior awards are equally erroneous.
The error here, and in Award 6291 upon which the majority relies, is in failure to correctly understand the purpose of rules like Regulation 4-M-1. The majority says, ". . . the specific language of Regulation 4-M-1 is obvi-
ously meant to cover a situation such as that with which we are here concerned." But this conclusion plainly contradicts the well known idea that a Carrier can do anything-within the law, etc.-which it has not bargained away.
Regulation 4-M-1 does not give the Carrier additional rights. It restricts Carrier rights. It protects an employe's right to hold a job of his own choosing, but permits some invasion of that right under circumstances traditionally arising within the scope of these employes' work peculiarities. Rules of this nature were intended to-and do-contemplate the complete absence from an employe's own position and working a complete shift on another.
The rule was not properly interpreted and applied in this award; therefore, I dissent.