"Claim on behalf of the General Committee of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen on the CSX Transportation, Inc. (CSXT):

Claim on behalf of W. M. Sheckles, Jr., M. T. Gaver, VX Kennedy, B. L. Watkins, M. A. Tarleton, T. E. Painter, J. L. Eagle, Jr and R. W. Graves for 15 hours at straight time rate to be divided equally among the Claimants account Carrier violated the current Signalmen's Agreement, particularly CSXT Labor Agreement IS-18-94, when it assigned a System Signal Construction Force, 7XF3, to perform maintenance work at Mile Post 34.2, Woodbine Road, and deprived the Claimants of the opportunity to perform this work. Carrier's File No. 15(01-0184). General Chairman's File No. BEW-01-1 1-O1 BRS File Case No. 12195-B&O."

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 is yet another claim alleging a violation of CSXT Labor Agreement No. 15-18-94 when the Carrier assigned a System Signal Construction Gang ("SSCG") to lift a signal shack which had been pushed off its foundation onto a new concrete pad or foundation. The Claimants are all Division Signalmen who claim that the work in question was "maintenance" work which belonged to them exclusively and that a member of a SSCG should not have been permitted to use a boom from the SSCG equipment inventory to assist in lifting the signal house off of its old foundation and setting it down on the new foundation. Both the SSCG employee and the Claimants are covered by the scope of the CSXT/BRS schedule Agreement.

As in so many other cases between these parties, the Organization contends that the work in dispute was not "construction" work per the definition of construction work as contained in the CSXT Labor Agreement No. 15-18-94. CSXT's position, on the other hand, is that CSXT Labor Agreement No. 15-18-94 provides for such use of System Signal Construction Gangs when more than routine maintenance is required and a major revision of existing systems is needed.

The Board has rendered more than two dozen cases addressing the seemingly endless stream of "construction vs. maintenance" disputes between these parties under the following paragraph of CSXT Labor Agreement No. 15-18-94:

"Construction Work - That work which involves the installation of new equipment and systems and the major revision of existing systems, and not that work which involves maintaining existing equipment or systems. Replacing existing systems as a result of flood, acts of God, derailment or other emergency may also be construction work.

System Signal Construction Gang - A gang used to perform year round construction work throughout the territory covered by the B&O Agreement."

"A careful review of the record convinces the Board that the Organization failed to meet its burden of proving a violation in this case. As noted, in cases such as this involving a jurisdictional dispute between employees of the same craft in different classes represented by the same Organization, the burden of establishing exclusivity is more heavily on the Petitioner. See Third Division Awards 35843 and 20425. The Organization failed to establish that the type of work here involved . . . was exclusively reserved to District maintenance forces by Agreement language or practice.

Further, the history of the `maintenance' vs. `construction' work dispute on this property, with claims filed by the Organization on behalf of each group, establishes that although CSXT Labor Agreement No. IS-18-94 specifically defines construction work to exclude routine maintenance of existing systems, nothing therein exclusively reserves such work to SSCGs to the exclusion of District Maintenance Gangs, or visa versa. See Third Division Awards 33155 and 32599. In agreement with a vast majority of the Awards issued concerning this issue on this property, we conclude that, in the absence of the Organization proving that District Maintenance forces have performed this work to the exclusion of all other classes of Signalmen, the claim must fail."

AWARD