Vice President Gregg of the Brotherhood was brought into the handling of this claim, and attached as Carrier's Exhibit E are reproductions of the correspondence exchanged with him, beginning with his letter of April 23, 1969, to General Chairman Harper, with copy to the undersigned, Carrier's highest designated officer to handle such disputes.
Such handling by Vice President Gregg was also injected in a similar claim on behalf of Signal Gang No. 1, J. W. Powers, Foreman, account sleeping cars of camp car outfit not being available at Yemassee, S. C., on July 29 and 30, 1968, which is now before the Third Division as Docket SG-18555.
OPINION OF BOARD: The dispute herein involves the same parties, the same agreement provisions, and similar contentions as were involved in Award No. 18496, and the findings in that Award are applicable here.
The Claimants were employes covered by Section I of the Memorandum Agreement of June 17, 1968, and when meals and lodging were not provided, they were entitled to the benefits specifically provided for in Sections I-A-3 and I-B-2 of that Agreement. They have been allowed such benefits.
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
DISSENT TO AWARDS NOS. 18496 AND 18497
DOCKETS NOS. SG-18555 AND SG-18723
Award No. 18496, and No. 18497 which follows it, is palpable error and should be disregarded in future disputes between the parties involved.
The Memorandum of Agreement of June 17, 1968 controls in the payment of expense allowances and travel time to all of the Carrier's Signal Department Employes who are employed in a type of service, the nature of which regularly requires them throughout their work week to live away from home in camp cars, camps, highway trailers, hotels or motels. That it applies only to these employes is established by the first sentence of Section II of the Agreement which rejects Section 11 of the Award of Arbitration Board 298 [Section 11 of the Award covered "Employes (other than those referred to in Section 1 * * *) who are required * * * to be away from their headquarters point * * *."] Hence, it is inescapable that the present Agreement covers those, and only those employes described in its Section I, and when the parties said in Section II that Rules 18, 19 and 25 of the working Agreement shall continue in effect for employes sent away from home station, they were referring to those employes embraced in Section I.
It being shown that the Memorandum provides benefits only for those employes set out in its Section I, and that all of the rules of the working Agreement were preserved to other employes by the first sentence of Section 11, the holding of the Majority is that the parties performed a useless act in writing the second sentence of Section II because there is no one left to whom it could apply. We have consistently held that to so interpret an agreement is improper.
CARRIER MEMBERS' ANSWER TO DISSENTS TO
AWARDS NOS. 18496 AND 18947,
DOCKETS NOS. SG-18555 AND SG-18723
The dissents consist in the main of a rehash of the arguments previously advanced by the Organization and the dissenter, all of which were fully considered and found lacking by the majority. Repetition does not add validity to the arguments.
Awards 18496 and 18497 and the records on which they are based stand as the best refutation of the views of the dissenter. The awards are not erroneous, and the dissents do not make them so, nor do the dissents detract from the awards.