Third Division Award No. 20272 (Blackwell) 

"The Agreement of the parties (Rule 6-A-1(a)) provides that an employee may be held out of service pending investigation - `only if his retention in service could be detrimental to himself, another person, or the Company.'

"The record is barren of any evidence tending to show the existence of circumstances which, under the quoted text of the rule, justify a withholding from service pending investigation. Indeed, the Trainmaster stated that the Claimant was taken out of service `because of his past discipline record.' This reason is obviously not covered by the plain wording of the rule and, consequently, we shall award compensation to Claimant for the period of his pre-hearing suspension from service."

Third Division Award No. 22034 (Lieberman)

"The question of the penalties imposed by the Carrier raises a number of questions. First, with respect to Carrier's act of removing Claimant from service prior to the investigation, we are most dubious as to whether her actions on August 14th constituted a `proper case' under Rule 45 warranting suspension. We think not for two reasons. In the fist instance, if her conduct warranted suspension prior to the hearing, Carrier should not have waited under several days later (after receipt of the letter of August 16th) to remove her from service. If her conduct constituted a hazard it should have been so considered immediately, not after a hiatus. Secondly, the incident on August 14th did not meet the test, long relied upon in this industry, of conduct which could potentially prove hazardous to the employe, to other employes, to the public or to Carrier's property. Thus, Claimant should be compensated for all time held out of service prior to her receipt of Carrier's letter of dismissal dated August 19, 1976."

Third Division Award No. 23412 (Dennis)

"In arguing that since claimant was charged with insubordination, it had a right to suspend him prior to a hearing, Carrier submitted numerous awards in support of its position. A review of those awards reveals that claimants in those cases were blatantly insubordinate and did, in fact, refuse to obey a direct order. That is not the situation in this case.

"It was not proven on the record that Claimant disobeyed a direct order or that when ordered, refused to wear his hat. What claimant did in this case was violate a rule that required him to wear his hard hat while on the job. A violation of a rule such as this cannot be construed as insubordination in the normal sense. If this Board were to decide otherwise, every alleged rule infraction could also carry the charge of insubordination. That is not what is meant by insubordination in labor relations.

"In the final analysis, what claimant is guilty of is failure to wear his hard hat on the job. This is a requirement about which all employes are aware. The infraction is justification for discipline and this Board has no quarrel with Carrier's position on this point. We do, however, find the manner in which Carrier assessed its penalty to be in error.

"It is the opinion of this Board that Carrier erred when it took claimant out of service without a hearing. We are therefore ordering that claimant be reimbursed for all lost wages from August 10, 1978, to September 5, 1978, the date of issuance of Carrier's decision in this case."

Third Division Award No. 23905 (Roukis)

"In our review of this case, we have carefully considered the procedural and substantive arguments advanced by Claimant, but we have not found them persuasive. The investigation was conducted in accordance with the requirements of contracted for dues process and the evidence adduced at the hearing fully shows that he failed to properly protect his position on August 1, 1978. Claimant was impermissibly absent on August 1, 1978 and he acted at his peril when he did not report to work but rather attended a little league baseball game. Carrier had the right to remove him from service that day, deny his claim for sick pay and discipline him for his infraction, consistent with the applicable rules of the controlling Agreement and it acted properly when it took these measures. However, we find that Claimant was improperly held out of service on August 2, 1978, since he was returned to service on August 3, 1978, four days prior to the August 7th investigation. He should have been returned to work on August 2 under these circumstances. Thus we will award him the eight (8) hours pay claimed in Part 4 of the Statement of Claim. ..."