currently watching: Seinfeld-Season 5 
currently listening to: The Microphones-It was hot we stayed in the water 
currently playing: NCAA Football 2004 (gamecube)
so i lost out on half of my most recent paycheck and am having to go through the union to appeal the decision the company made in taking my money. See if you can follow this, its pretty rediculous.
on the railroad there are a number of jobs where you get paid a “guarantee” based on your on-call availability. if you layoff a day, you lose a days worth of that guarantee for the payperiod. well, near the end of july i had been available/worked about 9 days or so in a row and laid off a day. totally normal. after my 24 hours off, i was available again but before i got called again i found out i won a bid (i didn’t expect to win this) to another job. again, nothing unusual here. but the new job i was going to is a job that rarely works (its lower paying but i didnt want to work a bunch outside during the hottest part of the year–yes i’m a wuss).
so, if you are still with me, i am now available on the new job but don’t get called for a week. again, normal for this job. well, at the end of that week i automatically go on my scheduled week-long vacation. its a vacation set at the beginning of the year based on seniority–we bid on what weeks we want. ok so now what has happened is i didn’t work between “layoffs” and therefore, according to rules setup to prevent guys from PURPOSELY cheating the pay-system, lose all guarantee between those layoffs.
clearly the company is mis-applying the pay-rules here because everything that happened was purely coincidental. when i laid off the first time, i fully expected to work again before my vacation. BUT, i unexpectantly won that bid to another job. i was available for work for a full week before my vacation and its not my fault i didnt get called during that time. and lastly, i didn’t request my 2nd layoff, the system just puts you in vacation automatically. heck, i dont know if i can even choose to NOT take a vacation, which i would have done if i knew i’d lose a week’s pay.
SOOOOOOO………thank goodness for the union. the appeals process can take many months but its worth it for a weeks pay. i guess this kind of thing probably happens to everyone in their railroad career and all we can do is stand together so things like this come to a stop. very very frustrating though!!!
