The service unit has been in violation of SBA-1141 (Vernon Award pg. 34-35 see Agreements in members section) for quite some time now and I recently was made aware of a claim that can be processed for the first out engineer on the NZ077 XE80 board when said violations occur. Simply put, during RCO operations there is supposed to be a primary and secondary operator… RCO & Utility. During switching operations, the pitch and catch feature is supposed to be used when needed. If the utility man gives verbal signals to the RCO operator a violation occurs.
“but for the fact that an RCO on the ground is not directly controlling the movement but giving control commands to the RCO… This then does arguably put the other RCO in the shoes of an engineer and would be impermissible unless there was an emergency such as the on-ground RCO’s transmitter not functioning. All members of a ground crew should have transmitters and utilize the pitch and catch features rather than one RCO utilizing a single transmitter to control the movement based on verbal signals of another groundman.”
This is not a simple claim to process, there are many things that need to be recorded to meet the burden of proof to show the agreement was violated. I have posted the letter I wrote to the GM (Member Section Agreements) and placed some forms with blank spaces to record the necessary information to help make our claim successful (Members Section Claims). We are going to need the help of everyone to record the information on the forms and place them in the BLET 404 box that I have placed at G3 (it doesn’t matter if you are in SMART-TD). I will collect whatever is in the box monthly and submit claims for you based on a snapshot of the extra board and the info on the forms. Then, when the claim is denied, you will have to put the denied claim along with your paystub from the half the claim was denied in the box for further processing.
Hopefully with everyone involved we can get some claims paid and eventually the utility men at G3 will get their box pay back and the agreement will be followed. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Please also share the info with our brothers and sisters.