On July 14, 2003, BNSF's Labor Relations department advised this office that based on various Public Law Board Awards rendered on former Santa Fe territories, air pay would not be allowed on our former BN territories when a crew:
After researching the Awards cited and the applicable Agreement rule, we responded on August 5, 2003, advising the Carrier that those Awards didn't even involve claims for air hose coupling for yard crews, and had no bearing on Article 31, Section A, of the Former Frisco Agreement, which reads as follows:
SECTION A
COUPLING AND/OR UNCOUPLING HOSE(Taken from Arbitration Award dated at Washington, D.C., August 1, 1951, made effective September 1, 1951.)
(1) Rules, Agreements, interpretations or practices which prohibit or restrict the use of yardmen to couple or uncouple air, steam and signal hose, shall be modified so that there will be no prohibitions or restrictions on yardmen performing such work and no payment therefor will be made but where rules, agreements, interpretations or practices require payment to yardmen under conditions stated therein for coupling or uncoupling air, steam and signal hose, such rules, agreements, interpretations, or practices shall be changed to provide for the payment of $2.75. (Present rate effective January 1, 1973 and future national wage adjustments are to be applied per Mediation Agreement May 1, 1969.)
(2) When yardmen are required by proper authority to couple or uncouple air, signal, and steam hose between cars, each member of the crew will be allowed an arbitrary payment of $2.75. (See explanation of rate in Part 1 above.)
(3) Payments provided in Part (2) will not apply to coupling or uncoupling air hose (1) between engine and cars, (2) between engine and caboose, (3) between caboose and cars, (4) between cars when cuts are made at crossings, (5) when couplings break after couplings have been properly made and movement by yard engine begun, (6) when air hose can be uncoupled without damage to equipment by simply "pulling the pin", nor to coupling or uncoupling tail hose.
(4) This arbitrary allowance shall be paid separate and apart from the work day and shall not be considered in arriving at overtime rate. The allowance is to be paid only once to a crew regardless of number of couplings or uncouplings of air hose during a tour of duty.
On Thursday, August 21, 2003, we learned that instead of attempting to research claims to determine their validity based on Labor Relations' new position, BNSF's TY&E Compensation Systems (TYECS) had simply programmed their system to automatically issue a declination for every air pay claim, and then send a message to the appropriate operating officer to review the claim, so that it could be approved for payment if it was resubmitted or appealed. Of course, those operating officers had absolutely no idea whether a particular claim met Labor Relations' new "interpretation" so they did nothing and the claims remained declined.
After several conversations with Labor Relations, new instructions were issued to TYECS to stop the automatic declinations, and instructions were also sent to appropriate local carrier officers to meet with the involved UTU Local Chairman to identify those yard assignments that regularly perform air hose couplings for purposes other than making an air test, so those claims could be pre-approved for payment without delay.
As it stands right now, the only issue that should require arbitration by this Committee is that narrow issue of whether or not air pay is still payable to yard assignments who are required to couple air for the sole purpose of performing an air test in connection with cars that they are handling. We have also reached an understanding with Labor Relations to waive the local handling on these claims in order to expedite the process of preparing a lead case for arbitration.
Please note that the above Agreement rule includes six specific exceptions when air pay is not allowable, and that any air hose coupling must be "…required by proper authority…" In order to assure that we do not have any unresolved factual dispute in the settlement of any outstanding air pay claims, employees should immediately stop coupling air hoses without specific authorization from a supervisor. When required by proper authority to couple air hoses (such authority may be verbal or by standing instructions or notice), employees submitting claims for air pay should identify the authority relied on and describe the circumstances so we can verify that the coupling of hoses was not within one of the six exceptions specified above.
We will post additional information as this issue progresses to arbitration.