The Board, upon the whole record and on the evidence, finds that the parties herein are carrier and Employees within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act, as amended; that this Board is duly constituted by agreement of the parties; that the Board has jurisdiction over the dispute, and that the parties were given due notice of the hearing.
This dispute challenges the performance of certain conveyor belt "training" work by Carrier's Bridge and Building (B&B) employes who are represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE). Belt training refers to the work associated with periodically adjusting the conveyor belts to keep them properly aligned on their rollers and running true.
Because of the nature of the dispute, the Board invited the BMWE to attend the Board's hearing and to file a submission to state its position. The BMWE availed itself of both opportunities.
Since the interested parties are intimately aware of the facts involved, this Award will provide only an abbreviated summary of the background circumstances.
on October 19, 1967, the Organization, Carrier and the BMWE signed a three-way agreement to allocate all maintenance work between the two bargaining units. In this agreement, "Ore Docks" referred to the employes represented by the Organization and "B&B" referred to the employes represented by the BMWE. Pertinent portions of the 1967 agreement read as follows:
The excerpted provisions above describe the work in dispute. Indeed, the Organization's submission, at page 9, states, "This work was clearly described in the Agreement of October 19, 1967.11 All in attendance at the Board's hearing confirmed that the foregoing language described the work in dispute.
The Organization has a "positions or work" scope rule which prevents the removal of covered work except by written agreement.
On October 20, 1977, the same three parties made another agreement to again allocate maintenance work between the Ore Docks and B&B employees. This was in response to technological changes to the conveyor equipment as well as the. startup of similar operations at Two Harbors. Pertinent portions of the 1977 Agreement read as follows:
reveals no other source of evidence showing performance of the disputed work by the Ore Dock employees after November 1, 1977. The submission of the BMWE, however, included a large number of employee statements showing past performance of the work by its members since November 1, 1977.
The organization contends the disputed work is really operational work, which is reserved to the employees it represents. It strongly emphasizes the text of the letter from Carrier's Director of Labor Relations in 1977 for support of its position. It also says that it was unaware of the past performance of the work by the B&B employees until recently. It notes that a 1981 claim challenging belt training was not pursued in reliance upon Carrier's assurances that tools were required, thus placing it within the domain of the B&B employees.
Carrier's position is that the work has been properly assigned to B&B employees since the effective date of the 1977 Agreement.
After careful review of the record, the Board finds that the weight of the evidence opposes the Claim. The central issue is whether the disputed work is "operational" work or "maintenance" work. The determining factor is what the various parties, themselves, defined it to be. The 1967 three-way agreement clearly lists the work among the various maintenance tasks to be allocated. in 1967, such belt training was allocated to the Ore Docks employees, who presumably performed it for the next ten years. But the performance of such maintenance work by operating personnel does not change the character of the work. The same is true of the 1977 letter written by the Carrier's Director of Labor Relations. Being only a two-party understanding, it could not operate to alter the character of the work under either the 1967 or the successor 1977 three-way agreements. Absent a three-way agreement of the parties to the contrary, and there is no evidence of such in this record, the work remained maintenance work. When the parties reached a new three-way agreement in 1977, the former allocation of work was extinguished. In that agreement, the Ore Docks employees retained only the greasing of conveyor systems. All other maintenance work, not specifically listed for Ore Docks employees
Public Law Board No. 5554 Award No. 4
Z
Ge ld E. Wallin, Chairman
and Neutral Member