The carrier or carriers and the employee or employees involved in this dispute are respectively carrier and employee 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.

On December 9, 1991, Carrier abolished Yardmaster positions at Buffalo, New York. Subsequent to those abolishments, the Organization presented a claim on behalf of Messrs. Stachura, Kraemer, Goergen and Contro when Carrier "diverted the Claimants from their regular assigned positions and required then to perform duties of a craft not covered by the Clerical Rules Agreement." The Organization submitted a second claim on behalf of the aforementioned individuals when Carrier "failed to call Claimants to fill the resultant clerical vacancies."

Carrier denied both claims maintaining that:

"In your letter you state that the Carrier does not have the right to abolish positions, diverting the duties to another position. In this particular case the duties that are being transferred are only incidental as they do not require the employees performing them to work overtime to complete the additional duties. These additional duties can be completed within a regular 8 hour shift along with the normal duties originally performed in these jobs.

These additional duties are, as mentioned in the Carrier's letter of March 25,1992, incidental and certainly do not form the preponderance of work to be performed. I fail to see how the Carrier has been in violation of Rules 1, 5, 8, 10, 11, Appendix 1 or any other Rules as contested by the Organization."

The General Chairman replied to Carrier noting that the duties involved could not be viewed as "incidental when those duties and responsibilities are being required of the Claimants for no less than eight hours a day." The General Chairman went on to note that:

"The Carrier does not have the right to abolish positions of one craft (yardmasters) and arbitrarily divert the employees covered by another craft (clerks) to perform resultant duties of same."

Further correspondence between the Parties did not bring about resolution to the issue. Therefore the dispute was submitted to the Board for adjudication.

Rule 1-Scope of the TCU Agreement is a so-called positions and work Rule which protects against encroachment upon work which it reserves to employees covered by its terms. However, that Rule provides no basis for the present claim in which the allegation is that TCU-Agreement covered employees were used to perform the work of a different craft. There is no demonstrated violation of the TCU Scope Rule on this record, nor for that matter, of Rules 5, 10, 11 or Appendix I. Those aspects of the dispute must be put to rest.

The only viable basis for the claim is the allegation that clerical employees were "required to suspend work during regular hours to absorb overtime," in violation of Rule 8. Carrier put the factual predicate for that claim in issue by maintaining throughout handling that the former Yardmaster work assigned to Clerks was merely "incidental;" specifically answering the Yardmaster's telephone and communicating instructions left by a Yardmaster to train crews by radio after the Yardmaster had gone off duty. Appendix I of the TCU Agreement lists among Train Clerk duties "incidental duties as may be assigned." The record is insufficiently developed on that critical point to permit en informed judgement by this Board and the onus of that insufficiency falls upon the moving Party with the burden of proof, in this case the Organization.

AWARD