Award Number 17248 Docket Number SG-17632
NATIONAL RAILROAD ADJUSTMENT BOARD
THIRD DIVISION
STATEMENT OF CLAIM: Claim of the General Committee of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen on the Southern Pacific Company (Pacific Lines) that:
EMPLOYES' STATEMENT OF FACTS: Claimant A. T. Hartless was a regularly assigned Signal Maintainer, with headquarters at Salinas, California. His assigned work days were Monday through Friday with rest days Saturday and Sunday.
Sunday, October 16, 1966, at 3:00 A.M., signal trouble developed at signals 1000 and 1001 on the Watsonville Junction territory.
Regularly assigned Signal Maintainer on the Watsonville Junction Territory, V. M. Radford, was properly signed off duty for the weekend, October 15, and 16, 1966.
Carrier called Signal Maintainer J. Lucas, Branch Line Maintainer at Watsonville Junction, who declined the call due to illness. Carrier then called Leading Signalman J. G. Choate, who was not a maintenance employe, to perform the overtime work.
Inasmuch as Claimant Hartless was a regularly assigned maintainer and the work involved is reserved to employes assigned to regular maintenance duties, claim was initiated in his behalf, subsequently handled in the usual and proper manner on the property, up to and including the highest officer of the Carrier designated to handle such disputes, without receiving a satisfactory settlement. Pertinent exchange of correspondence on the property is attached hereto as Brotherhood's Exhibits Nos. 1 through 6.
Copy of General Chairman's reply to that letter, dated March 27, 1967, is attached as Carrier's Exhibit "E".
OPINION OF BOARD: Claimant Hartless was a regularly assigned Signal Maintainer and contends that he should have been called to work on faulty signals on October 16, 1966, though not the regularly assigned maintainer on that territory.
When the trouble developed, Carrier called regularly assigned Signal Maintainer V. M. Radford, who had signed off duty for the weekend.
Carrier next called another signal maintainer, who declined the call due to illness.
Leading Signalman J, G. Choate, not a maintenance employe, was then called and performed the work.
Carrier claims that under the language of Rule 16 it was not obligated to use Claimant Hartless and could use an employe not so regularly assigned.
While there are similar rules with other Carriers which by their specific language might allow this procedure, it us not the situation here.
In drafting this rule, the parties might have chosen to limit the Carrier's obligation to a single asignee, as was done in the agreement between the Brotherhood and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in its Rule 19, which reads:
We can not rewrite the agreement, and must find that Carrier was in violation of Rule 16 when it used an employe assigned other than to signal maintenance work when Claimant was holding himself available for work as provided by the rule.
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
We respectfully submit that the award fails to come to grips with the only real issue, namely, whether this Claimant was a "regularly assigned employe" for the involved work within the meaning of the Call Rule. The award places great emphasis on the fact that the Call Rule is worded in the plural rather than the singular. This fact, standing alone, obviously proves nothing more than that there may be more than one regularly assigned employe. Both parties agree to the obvious fact that under this rule there may be more than one employe "regularly assigned".
Carrier takes the entirely logical position that the term "regularly assigned employes" means employes assigned to the particular work, namely, those assigned to do what is generally done by the maintainers within the assigned district. The Employes also take the position that this is the primary meaning of the word, for they specifically contend that assigned maintainers in the particular district have first call under the rule. The rule itself provides for no secondary entitlement, but the Employes would have us attach a secondary meaning to the term, namely, if the persons regularly assigned to the work are not available then call must go to employes not assigned to the particular district or work but assigned as maintainers elsewhere in preference to signalmen who are assigned to the particular district. They cite no authority whatever for the contention that this secondary meaning should be attached, and for this Board to adopt that meaning without evidence to support it would be to attempt to amend the agreement.
This Board was confronted with a rule containing similar provisions in Award 12554 involving signalmen on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. In that case, as here, this same Petitioner alleged that because of the provisions for calling the regular maintainers, the carrier was precluded from calling men in other classifications. There, as here, trouble developed on the district of a maintainer who was not available. Instead of calling the maintainer of an adjoining district, the carrier there called a signal testman, The Petitioner's contention that this constituted a violation of the agreement was denied.
In this award an attempt is made to distinguish the Rock Island case on the premise that the Call Rule in that case used the singular, stating that "the regular assignee will be called"; whereas the rule in the instant case uses the plural, stating that "regularly assigned employes shall be