Form 1 Award No. 40549The 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.
The instant case involves the failure to give advance notice to the General Chairman before using sub-contractors to dump piles of snow in the Murray Yards in Kansas City, Missouri, on January 5, 2005 using a contractor's dump truck. The Carrier contends that this was an "emergency" situation. However, the Organization contends that the snow had already been plowed and moved after the snowstorm in a manner that permitted train movement within the yard, and that the contractor's dump truck was simply removing piles of accumulated snow from the yard.
The Agreement contains a Truck Driver classification. After a substantial snowfall, the Carrier determined to move snow from one portion of its property to another portion of the Carrier's property. As the Organization aptly contends, Hertz and other rental companies had dump trucks suitable for this purpose readily available, and such equipment could have been rented as contemplated by the Agreement. Moreover, because the snow had been stockpiled from an earlier snowstorm, the removal of the snow from the Carrier's premises did not constitute a true emergency. Moreover, heavy snowfall in Missouri during the winter is not an unexpected event.
Because no attempt was made to assign the disputed work to bargaining unit employees who were available and qualified to perform this work, which is within the scope of their job classification, the Carrier violated the Agreement when it assigned outside forces to perform this snow removal at the Murray Yards in Kansas City, Missouri, on January 5, 2005. The Agreement was further violated when the Carrier failed to provide the General Chairman advance written notice of its plans to contract out the above-described work as stipulated in the Note to Rule 55 and Appendix Y. Consequently, Claimants D. Mendoza, S. Scheerer, G. Form 1 Award No. 40549
Marquez and R. Newberry shall now each be compensated for three hours at their respective time and one-half rates of pay as a result of this violation.
This Board, after consideration of the dispute identified above, hereby orders that an award favorable to the Claimant(s) be made. The Carrier is ordered to make the Award effective on or before 30 days following the postmark date the Award is transmitted to the parties.