The carrier or carriers and the employee or employees involved in this dispute are respectively carrier or 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.
This claim involves a contention by the Organization that Carrier allegedly removed the performance of certain time keeping work from the Signalmen's class and assigned such work to a management employee. The Organization alternately referred to "management employees" and "supervisory employees" as the group which they say performed the disputed work. Actually, the work in question was performed by agreement-covered supervisors who are represented by the United Railway Supervisors Association (URSA). The URSA represents employees in the classes of subordinate officials known as Supervisor, Assistant Supervisor and General Foreman. Because of the involvement of these two classes of union-represented employees, the Board gave notice of the pending dispute to URSA and offered them the opportunity to be heard in this matter. The URSA presented an ex-parte Submission to the Board in which it outlined its position relative to the dispute.
The situation which formed the basis of the dispute concerns the work of reviewing, verifying and transmitting daily time and work reports which are submitted daily by employees of the Signal Department. The Organization contended that the receipt, approval and transmittal of daily time and work report information from employees of the Signal Department has, by past practice, been performed by Signal Inspectors. Therefore, they argued that such work is reserved to the Signalmen's craft by the provisions of their Scope Rule and the performance of such work by other than BRS-represented employees constituted a violation of that Scope Rule.
The case record shows that, beginning in April, 1992, Carrier initiated an additional level of oversight and review of daily time and work reports by utilizing an Assistant Supervisor (URSA) to verify the accuracy of time and work reports, sign the time reports and transmit such reports via fax machine to the appropriate payroll department. Immediately prior to April 1992, the case record shows that such daily time and work reports were received from the individual employees by the Signal Inspector (BRS) and were signed and forwarded to the payroll department by the Signal Inspector. Since April 1992, the Signal Inspector continues to receive the daily time and work reports which are reviewed, verified and forwarded to the URSA supervisor. Form 1 Award No. 31642
The Organization in support of its position has advanced the argument that this Scope Rule reserves to Signalmen work which may not be specifically included by reference within the Rule but which was performed by a past practice at a particular location on a former component property on the effective date of the Agreement. They insist that, in the past, the function of receiving, approving and forwarding of daily time and work reports from signalmen was a work item which was performed by the Signal Inspector. They argue that the use of an employee other than the Signal Inspector from another class of employees to perform work of this nature violates the preservation provisions of the Signalmen's Scope rule.
The United Railway Supervisors Association expressed the opinion that inasmuch as Supervisors are required to be responsible for and to verify the accuracy of time reports submitted for work performed by subordinate employees under their supervision, the work here in dispute is, in fact, work which properly accrues to Supervisors under the language of the URSA Scope rule, specifically paragraph thereof.
The Carrier's position in this case consists primarily of the contention that the disputed work is supervisory in nature and was properly performed by Supervisors. They further argue that the Signalmen's Scope Rule is general in nature, and, therefore, the Organization must show a system-wide past practice in order to lay claim to work not specifically mentioned in the rule. Additionally, Carrier contends that the Signalmen's Organization has failed to present any evidence to prove that the work here in question was, in fact, performed by Signalmen prior to or on the effective date of the revised Scope rule which contains the "savings" feature here involved. Form 1 Award No. 31642
From the Board's review of the case record and after studying the evidence and the Scope Rule here involved, the Board cannot agree with the Carrier's position that the Organization must prove system-wide exclusivity of performance in order to prevail. The language of this Scope Rule which became effective on September 1, 1981, clearly recognizes that there may have been items of work at certain locations on the former separate properties which were not specifically covered by the Scope Rule, but which were, by practice, performed by the employees then covered by the Scope Rule. If they did such work at one location prior to the effective date of the new Scope rule then that work continued to be theirs at that location after the effective date of the new Scope rule. The very nature of this agreed-upon rule provision mitigates against the need to prove a "system wide" practice as espoused by Carrier in this instance. Carrier's position in this regard is rejected.
The Board is not convinced, however, from the record in this case that the work here in dispute was, in fact, performed by Signal Inspectors at the locations in question on the effective date of the revised Scope Rule. As the moving party in the dispute, the Signalmen's Organization has the responsibility of proving by probative evidence all aspects of the claim which it initiates. In this situation, that includes proof that the disputed work was, in fact, performed by Signalmen on the date that the revised Scope rule became effective. Such proof is not found in this case record. The fact that BRS-represented employees may have performed such work in one form or another immediately prior to the claim period here in question does not, ipso facto, reserve such work to Signalmen under the specific language of the 1981 revision of the Scope Rule which limited to and saved for Signalmen the items of work which they were performing on the effective date of the Agreement.
As for the actual work here involved, the evidence of record shows that the Signal Inspector receives the time and work information daily from the employees and records it on the daily time reports. The time reports are then given to the Supervisor who reviews them, verifies the time and work information, signs the reports and transmits them to the timekeeper. This type of activity is supervisory in nature and in the Board's opinion is properly performed by the URSA-represented employee. There a no proof in this case that any work which properly accrues to Signalmen under their Scope Rule has been removed therefrom. Therefore, the claim as presented is denied
This Board, after consideration of the dispute identified above, hereby orders that an award favorable to the Claimant(s) not be made.