In response to General Chairman Kerley's challenge of the Carrier's recovery of alleged overpayments to employees on BN guaranteed extra boards, the Carrier officer responsible for this matter claimed that the overpayments were a "mechanical error" because the new TK2000 timekeeping system had been improperly programmed. Below is the text of the General Chairman's answer, dated May 3, 2000:

"Reference your letter dated April 26, 2000, in response to mine of April 11, 2000, concerning the above caption.

You did not furnish a copy of the Award cited in support of the Carrier's actions, but from the quoted language it is obvious that the facts of that case are not at all like the instant claims. In that case a programmer made a mistake. In the instant case, the program for calculating extra board guarantees had already been in place on former Santa Fe territories for some time, and the Carrier knew full well that the BN Agreement was different as concerns the application of emergency earnings in other crafts. The year 2000 did not sneak up on anyone. The Carrier simply failed to get the new system modified to handle the BN rules. Then the Carrier implemented the new system knowing full well that it was not ready to do the job. The Carrier failed to have sufficient timekeeping staff to audit the implementation manually. The Carrier failed to furnish guarantee calculation summaries on the employees' earnings statements when it implemented the new system. After all this, the Carrier failed to timely decline the claims.

Attached is a copy of Award No. 1 of SBA 918, a case like this one in which the Carrier dropped the ball in auditing claims and then attempted to recoup after the time limit. In that case, as in this one, the issue was not one of clerical or mathematical error, but rather the essential validity of the claim. The Board held that the Carrier must act within the time limits.

Clearly, the instant case involves no computer error and no programmer error. The problem here is simply one of Carrier inaction. You advised me in your letter of November 16, 1999 that the ISS team had addressed 249 of 300 changes discovered after implementation of the new system, most of which were minor. In subsequent conversations I repeatedly asked you for a listing of those changes so we would have some idea of the magnitude of the problem. To date I have not seen that list. I have not yet been advised when this guarantee calculation problem was "discovered" and frankly I can't believe that hundreds of "minor" changes were made without someone realizing that you could not use the Santa Fe system to calculate the BN extra board guarantee. If something that obvious was overlooked then I am deeply concerned about what additional major problems may have been missed while programming time was being used on "minor" changes.

The appropriate claims will be submitted for these untimely recoveries."