In September, 2000, one of our Conductor members was removed from service in Dilworth, Minnesota, after he declined to depart the initial terminal of his run with a CSX locomotive not equipped with a Conductor's desk and light as required by the BN Award of Arbitration Board 419. This office intervened and the Conductor was reinstated, but was immediately given an investigation notice charging him with insubordination and failure to comply with instructions. Ultimately, those charges were also dropped, and we agreed to expedited arbitration to determine whether or not the train was operating in "run-through service" as that term is used in Article XI of the October 31, 1985 UTU National Agreement. The train operated solely on former BN property from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Galesburg, Illinois, but the CSX locomotive was being used under a "power swap" arrangement with CSX, having earlier come to BNSF from the CSX at Chicago. Therefore, the Carrier argued that any use of the CSX locomotive on BNSF must be considered "run-through service" and BN locomotive standards did not apply. As a second argument, the Carrier pointed to the fact that the locomotive and seven cars in the train were actually in route back to CSX at Chicago (although the entire train was to be reclassified at Galesburg), so this was in effect a run-through operation anyway. This Award rejected the Carrier's arguments entirely, holding that the term "run-through service" as used in Article XI is a reference to a train operation, not an arrangement between two Carriers to cross-utilize locomotive power, and since the train in this case both originated and terminated on former BN territory, BN locomotive standards applied. This also means that the Conductor's initial decision to decline the non-complying CSX locomotive was correct, and Carrier's decision to remove him from service or bring charges against him was totally unwarranted.

This is now the second time a Public Law Board has rejected the Carrier's attempts to avoid properly equipping all locomotives used in exclusively BN operations pursuant to the standards of the BN 419 Award. In fact, after its first loss at arbitration, the Carrier made a brief attempt to "cram down" Santa Fe locomotive standards on former BN lines as a condition of merger, and ultimately abandoned that effort. If the Carrier would devote a fraction of the resources and effort managing its power fleet that it wastes chasing arbitration cases, the problem would have been resolved long ago.