The Third Division of the Adjustment Board, upon the whole record and all the evidence, finds that:
The carrier or carriers and the employe or employes involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employe 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.
Parties to said dispute waived right of appearance at hearing thereon.
In February 1990, the letters from the personnel file of the claimant were inadvertently attached to a transcript sent to another employe. That employe turned them over to Claimant and he, in turn, objected to their being included in his file.
Carrier maintains that the notes were not letters of caution or reprimand to be utilized for disciplinary purposes. Rather, they were intended "to serve as information regarding previous discussions concerning incidents wher Form 1 Award No. 29872
The organization believes that the letters were disciplinary in nature and that Carrier erred in failing to hold a hearing in conjunction with their issuance. It argues that if they are construed as "warning/reprimands/informational letters," there is no reason for them to be retained.
This Board accepts at face value Carrier's contention that it does not intend to use the letters in question for disciplinary purposes. Clearly, if any reference were made to them on Claimant's official discipline record, that would be unacceptable.
It is also this Board's position that a record of counselling discussions held by Supervisors with employes may be retained in employment files, since this information is helpful in later determining whether reasonable steps were taken by Management prior to the imposition of discipline. By this we mean discussions that were intended to assist the employe in improving his or her performance or behavior and not simply references to incidents or discussions in which the employe was involved.
Of the three letters at issue in this case, only one--a memo written to the file by the Manager of Physical Facilities in Huntington, on April 7, 1989--meets the standard that has been established for retention, since it discusses specific incidents of counselling on a variety of dates. The other two are not acceptable. Of these, one was written by a fellow employe and the other refers to one of the incidents about which Claimant was counselled and simply describes the alleged event by a third party.
The memorandum dated April 7, 1989, written by the Manager of Physical Facilities shall be retained in Claimant's personnel file. The other two notes are to be removed.