Re: (erielack) TIME CHANGE

[WSmith5957_@_aol.com]

Reading Mr Martins post on the time change remiinded me of the fall of 1965 
or so when we turned back the clocks at East Binghamton yard resulting in 
everyone on the afternoon shift engines working 9 hours instead of 8 due to being 
in the interval when the hour was added to the workday. I, along with many 
others turned in a timeslip for 8 hours at straight time  plus one hour at 
overtime acct being on duty in yard service for 9 hours. All these were duly denied 
......NO BASIS TO THIS CLAIM. I called the office and asked the crew dispatcher 
why he'd denied the claim and he advised me that he had nothing to do with 
it, that the RFE, Sammy Miller, had done it personally & furthermore if there 
were any questions, I should call his ofice and speak to him about it. I called 
his office for 3 days in a row several times each day and finally got him on 
the 4th day. (At this point I must digress to explain that I was really pissed 
about not beiing able to reach him since he had just given me 5 days off as 
discipline for missing a call. It's OK for him not to answer the phone, but if 
YOU don't, I'll torture you to death.)  When he came to the phone, he explained 
to me that the reason for the denial was that in the Spring, when the clocks 
moved forward, whoever worked the yard jobs on the DL&W side went home an hour 
early, so he was 'evening things up now'. I told him that I was working a 
road job in the Spring of the year, but he replied that "Whoever it was then, 
you're on the job NOW & the denial was legal". 
      After this bit of Kafka-esque reasoning, I decided it was useless to 
try & reason with Sammy & I therefore wrote up a claim for 1 hour at 
time-and-one-half since it was improperly denied. I forgot about it afte a while, but a 
few years later, they had accumulated hundreds of these idiotic claims and 
after arbitration they were all paid. I also heard that Sammy got a blistering 
letter from Cleveland for all the problems this caused the Accounting Dept. 
there. I suppose it was one more reason he hated & tormented  the DL&W men. I just 
had my memory jogged by the notes on the timechange.
Regards to all,
Walter E. Smith

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