"Claim on behalf of the General Committee of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Co:

Claim on behalf of Signal Gang No. 28308, for 98 hours and 10 minutes straight time and 76 hours and 30 minutes overtime plus skill differential to be divided equally between the Claimants, account Carrier violated the current Signalmen's Agreement, particularly the Scope Rule and Attachment 7, when it used outside contractors to perform directional earth boring beginning on September 26, 2000, through September 30, 2000, and deprived the Claimants of the opportunity to perform this work. Carrier's File No. 35-01-0007. General Chairman's File No. 00-45-01. BRS File Case No. 11847-BNSF."

This Division of the Adjustment Board has jurisdiction over the dispute involved herein.

Parties to said dispute were given due notice of hearing thereon.

On the dates in question the Carrier utilized the services of an outside contractor in conjunction with work being performed at Tower 60 near Fort Worth, Texas, rather than assigning the work to the Claimants, who were members of Signal Gang No. 28308. Beyond that fact however, the parties disagree as to the extent of the work that the contractor did in fact perform. In other words, the parties disagree whether the contractor performed only directional boring or whether its forces engaged in other work as well. Moreover, the state of the record is such that we are unable to resolve that dispute of fact. Because the record is therefore deficient, we must find that the Organization failed to meet its burden of proof and reject the claim.

AWARD