Form 1 NATIONAL RAILROAD ADJUSTMENT BOARD Award No. 27590
 THIRD DIVISION Docket No. MW-27231
 88-3-86-3-319
 The Third Division consisted of the regular members and in
 addition Referee John C. Fletcher when award was rendered.

 (Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes PARTIES TO DISPUTE: (Soo Line Railroad Company

 STATEMENT OF CLAIM: "Claim of the System Committee of the Brotherhood that:

 (1) The Carrier violated the Agreement when it assigned Mechanical Department forces instead of Bridge and Building Department forces to paint the 'Rip Track Toilet facility' at North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on February 22 and 23, 1985 [System File 1 45(c,e) 4(o)/800-46-B-166].

 (2) Regional Engineer G. A. Nilsen failed to disallow the claim presented to him by General Chai




FINDINGS:

 The Third Division of the Adjustment Board, upon the whole record and all evidence, finds that:

 The carrier or carriers and the employe and employees involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employes within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act as approved June 21, 1934.

 This Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein.

The Claim before this Board contends that the Organization's Agreement was violated when du Lac Rip Track facility. The Carmen's Union was joined as a Third Party and filed a brief contending that assignment of Carmen to paint the toilet was proper under its Agreemen and the Third Party involvement of the Carmen we must first dispose of the issue of whether this Claim is to be allowed as presented because it was initially denied by an Officer other than the individual with whom it was filed.
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 On February 28, 1985, the initial Claim was filed with Carrier's Regional Engineer located at St that position had been promoted to Chief Engineer and transferred to Minneapolis. On March 18, 1985, the Claim was denied by the Assistant Regional Engineer.



This Rule had its genesis in Article V of the August 21, 1954 Non-Ops National Agreement. Since that time this Board, as well as a number of PLB's, reviewed time limit issues identical in substance to that here involved. Our decisions have not been uniform. On occasion we have ordered that claims be allowed as presented when a carrier officer other than the one with whom the claim was filed, or to whom appealed, effected a denial. On other occasions we have concluded that the Rule does not require that the reply must come from the officer authorized to receive the claim, only that the carrier notify the organization or the claima
There are two recent decisions of this Division which highlight this inconsistency, Third Division Awards 26328 and 26572. In Award 26328 we rejected the notion that only the individual authorized to receive a claim or appeal could properly effect an answer. Here we stated:

Conversely, in Award 26572 we held:








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 After detailed study of this matter, we become skeptical of the Awards which maintain, as a generality, that only the individual authorized to receive claims may properly responsibility for disallowing claims is coexistent with the authority to receive claims and only th answer the matter ignores distinct language differences in the Rule. For another the very predicates for "the weight of authority" for this line of decision is faulty and of
Examination of the Awards cited by the Organization vividly illustrates this last point. The earliest Award cited by the Organization is Third Division Award 4529. While certain language in that Award most surely supports the Organization's notion on the app claim that occurred seven years before Article V was adopted.

 Third Division Award 11374 is the next Award relied on by the Organization. At first blush, it seems to support the conclusion sought by the Organization. In this regard the organization mainly relies on our comments suggesting that:

But this is not the issue on which we decided that case. The claim in Award 11374 was sustained because the Carrier Officer authorized to receive the claim at the first level failed to proffer "th-e reasons for such disallowance." What happened was that shortly after he received the Claim, the Chief Carpenter wrote the Organization that he was forwarding the Organization's letter to Carrier's Division Engineer. The Division Engineer responded. Later, but still within the time limits within which to answer, the Chief Carpenter denied the Claim, but the denial failed to state his reasons.

 The next Award, in date sequence, cited by the Organization, Third Division Award 16508, involved a situation where a claim was appealed to the Division Engineer but was answer provided that claims must be initially filed with the Division Engineer and when declined by him appealed to the Chief Engineer and then to the Director of Personnel "in that ord

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 third Division Awards 11374 and 16408 are cited as support to the conclusions reached in some of Several of these later Awards, though, appear to cite 11374 and 16508 without any basic understanding of their complete context. For example in Third Division Award 22710 it is stated:

without mention of the fact that the Chief Carpenter did in fact timely deny the claim and that we sustained the grievance only because this denial failed to state its basis, a clear requirement of the Rule. Also in Award 22710 we wrote: "Other Awards that have followed the same principle are Nos. 4529 ... 18002 ..."

 without noticeable acknowledgment that Award 4529 preceded the adoption of Article V of the Augu agreement language which not only set forth the appeal process but also the specific officer involve the Carrier to designate the individual authorized to receive claims.

 Article V Rules require that claims are to be filed with a specifically designated officer and t that could properly respond then it would have been a simple matter to state this result in the Rule, or some other accepted instrument, as was done by letter in the claim invol case the Carrier had specifically directed that claims:

Accordingly, from our present examination of the "weight of authority" on this matter we are not persuaded that the decisions holding that only the individual that received t those Article V Time Limit Rules that have not been altered in some fashion so as to express this specific intent. Unaltered Article V Time Limit Rules can not, in our judgement, be read so as to replace "Carrier" with "officer" in the second sentence of paragraph (a). To do so is clearly insertion of additional language within the Rule, something the drafters did not see fit to insert, something we must avoid.
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 Notwithstanding the above, it must be noted that several months ago, these same parties were before this Board in a case involving identical issues under the same Agreement at the same location. Here, too, the issue of filing a claim with one officer and having it denied by a different officer was present. In Third Division Award 27179 we stated:

More tortuously, we reach the same result here.

 In looking at the merits of the Claim, we note that in our Award 27179 we also concluded that the Organization had not established a violation of its Agreement when Carrier used Carmen to paint interior walls in the east end of the North Fond du Lac Roundhouse ten months before they were used to paint the toilet, the painting involved in our Claim. We do not find Award 27179 to be in palpable error. After examination of the evidence before us we are not persuaded that a sufficien violated when Carrier used Carmen to do the work involved.

        Claim denied.


                        NATIONAL RAILROAD ADJUSTMENT BOARD

                        By Order of Third Division


                  0000

Attest: 400,140
      Nancy J./I?Ker - Executive Secretary


Dated at Chicago, Illinois, this 27th day of October 1988.

LABOR MEMBER'S DISSENT

TO

AWARD 27590 - DOCKET MW-27231


To say that the Majority in this Award "tortuously" went out of its way to undermine the orderly handling of claims under the applicable Agreement would be an understatement. But rather than delve into the confusion that will come from this Award, I will only redirect the Majority's attention to the established interpretation of the time limit rules, i.e., Third Division Award 25091.

    "This issue, the question of the authorized Carrier officer to receive and respond to claims on this property, was resolved by Third Division Award 23943 (Lieberman), wherein it was determined:


        'All the authorities cited by the parties have been reviewed and it is clear that the great weig in closely related circumstances supports the Organization's position. Those awards hold that the of Carrier who had been previously designated as the individual to receive claims or appeals must be th sponds to such claims or appeals. For example, this Board in Award 22710 stated:


    "We have reviewed the authority submitted by the parties. The great weight of authority supports the position of the Organization that the Carrier committed a procedural error when an official other th one designated to receive and process the claims responded to the claim.""' Therefore, I dissent.


1 '

D. . Bartholomay