It's been two weeks and it looks like the prize for answering the "chucking
your rights quiz" will go unclaimed. Nice try Brad as you got two questions
right.
The answer key(at least my version):
1)Term for brakeman who chucked his rights(gave up Conds seniority)
Answer=DRONE. (Look up the definition in the dictionary and if there's need for
more
discussion lets do so).
Why would he chuck his rights? Brad was correct and I'll elaborate. After
years of working the extra list,nights,weekends,out of town based jobs the man
has enough seniority(whiskers) to hold a nice daytime run. After a few months
he gets his letter to take the Condrs exam and as soon as he passes it; he
is placed at the bottom of the Condrs seniority list and starts the
nights,weekend,extra list,etc all over again but now as the Condr. He can look
forward
to several more years of this before he can again hold any steady job with
even remotely reasonable hours. So........... he says the hexx with this and
relinquishes his right to promotion and stays where he is as a bkrmn and looks
forward to only better runs in the future as a brkmn.
2)Why was this practice so widespread on the Aurora Division? The Aurora
zone manned all the passenger runs(after the Chicago road men and Aurora men
made an agreement moving manning to Aurora,this is another whole separate
story) and those along with many frt locals gave the man a steady job,often
with
preferred hours.
3) Brads' example of George Thompson was a good one. Here's another one. In
1974 or '75 a DRONE retired from a one round trip dinky. He had 41 or 42 years
service of which 29 were on one round trip dinky assignments !
4) Downside? There were several. Someone working as a Condr,with higher
seniority than you as a brkmn, could decide to chuck his rights and then bump
you
off your cush run. The cush runs could and were pulled off. Many who gave up
their rights ended their careers on the dinkies when they had planned to
spend their time in the passenger pools.
5) Rule 72c in the schedule covered this practice. Probably one of the most
quoted clauses.
6)How did switchmans schedule accomplish same thing w/o giving up your
foremans rights? The yardmen had a "bump" or bid every Friday for the next
weeks
jobs. You could bid based on your switchmans seniority rather than on your
promotion date to foreman if you so chose. That way you could work as a helper
on your preferred job while younger men were foreman on less desireable jobs.
If you wanted to work as a foreman than you bid the foremans spot and if
you're foreman seniority entitled you it was yours.
Leo Phillipp
Ps-The book "Rockefellers Secret Weapon" will go in the Spring Meet raffle
prizes.
**************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy
Awards. Go to AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565)
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