Brad, your warm. In frt service(yard,local,thru) 100 miles was the minimum
day. Whether you worked 5 minutes (therefore the desire for some to work
"quit"jobs) or up to 8 hrs the pay was 100 miles. A side note about the east
end w/f I recall that 2 of the members of the crew on that job in the early
70's had side jobs so the quicker the east end got in the sooner they got to
the second job.
Now the guarantee that I referred to was the 30 day guarantee on passenger
service. Assigned trainman in passenger service were guaranteed 30 minimum
days each month whether your job worked or not. Now remember minimum day on
passenger was 150 miles (not 100 as in frt) but the rate was so low that 150
still earned less than 100 in frt so the agreement made some sense in order
to "entice" guys to work passenger. What the contract didn't say or do was
offset excess miles or overtime against the guarantee. So for example
suburban jobs that only approached minimum mileage after 2 round trips earned
several hours of O.T. each day but still got the monthly guarantee. So while
the administration went through various schemes over the years(some more user
friendly than others) the best way to explain it follows. If you were
scheduled to be off say 6 days in the month(2 Saturdays and 4 Sundays) then 6
minimum days pay were divided into the number the job was scheduled to work.
Then each person(the regular assigned guy or extra man off the list) received
the "guarantee portion" along w/the regular days pay for each day. It was/is
the guarantee that makes the suburban jobs so attractive to trainman.
A similar guarantee was in place for assigned(scheduled) way freights where
again the rate was low per mile. This guaranteed that all regular way
freights were to be "advertised" for 6 days/week and if one wasn't then the
sixth day was prorated during the 5 it was advertised. This is how the East
End was advertised and why for a minimum day job it went high in seniority.
All other locals were 6 day jobs and if they were annulled the crew was paid
for the day they didn't work that week.
Leo
P.S.-Of course this discussion generated a couple more memories about unique
incidents involving the above. Maybe another day.
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