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 were given due notice of hearing thereon.

This dispute involves the use of leased equipment, required by the lessor to be operated by its own operator. This was part of a project which was, in fact, undertaken by Carrier forces.

The Organization contends that the Carrier failed to provide the required advance notice to the General Chairman. The Carrier includes documentation in its Submission as to notification and report of a conference with the General Chairman as to "drainage improvement." The Organization points out that such documentation was not included in the on-property claim handling and cannot now be considered by the Board. The Board concurs. In addition, examination of the exchange of letters leaves some doubt as to its applicability to the January 7-10, 1992 occurrence here under review.

The documentation nevertheless does give some support to the Carrier's contention that the Organization had knowledge of previous incidents of leasing special equipment with operators supplied by the lessor.

The Carrier raises the argument of "exclusivity;" that is, the Organization did not show that employees it represents have performed the work to the exclusion of all others. This argument has been shown repeatedly and convincingly to be nondeterminative in contracting matters (appropriate as it may be in disputes between various crafts and classifications).

In sum, the Board is persuaded that there was failure to provide notice of use of an outside contractor (whether or not an actual "contract" was signed). Given the Carrier's unrefuted assertion that its use of leased equipment with an operator had been undertaken without challenge in the past, a monetary remedy is inappropriate.

97-3-93-3-299