Many of you may have possibly noticed that your LCAT claims have not received any attention or status changes in the “Claim State” since being input for the years of 2007 thru 2009. Our office has received some input from concerned local chairmen and hopefully this will address any questions or concerns you may have. The most common statement is: “they are skipping over the claims because they are answering the 2010 claims but I have all these claims from 2007-2009 that are not being touched!”, and basically that is true. 

Now realistically here is where the position of your “claim state” is actually at: Nothing can really change with those claims to our satisfaction unless they are in a “paid” or “agreed to arbitrate” status and quite frankly Labor Relations and our office does not have the time to go back 3 years and start making sure every claim is in its proper LCAT state because we would then never get to the 2010 claims until 2013. That viscous cycle would never end so we are handling them in whatever current state they are in, to include those still in “appealed to LR”.

We all put our heads together in an attempt to get a plan so both the Carrier and our office could at least have a chance at getting caught up. What we have found is that our committee averages 1,200 claims a year and if you were to just push all the buttons in order to have them sitting in the proper step for us to conference we would never get caught up, not to mention if each side took 60 days to complete each step of the appeal process.

With that having been said, our office and LR are now on an aggressive schedule to get thru the huge back log of claims. After our meeting in January we agreed that any claim in LCAT before the current year (2010) will remain in their present state, whatever that may be, until such time that we conference those claims. The logic to our thinking was: there will, of course, be no new 2007 thru 2009 claims coming into LCAT, so we can safely leave them in their present state (by mutual agreement) until conference. Our office does have the technology to advance a claim on your behalf, once it is declined by LR at your level of appeal, all the way to “agree to arbitrate” should the need arise during a conference; so there is no need to worry about changing the status of any pre-2010 claim.

CSX Labor Relations will be working on current 2010 claims (or skipping as some may call it) except for when we go to conference. In conference we are working by year with the 2007’s going first.  So if you see a claim for 2007 getting paid at your level, it is because we have handled it in conference.  When not in conference, Labor Relations and our office will be working on the older claims via phone or email. We have also agreed to hold a conference every 2 weeks, with a minimum of 4 days a month set aside strictly for claims conference. Both parties are under the gun to get the claims current!

We are now handling more claims in this office than has been done in quite a long time. With the LCAT system now finally being used at our conferences we also have a learning curve, but things are starting to pick up.  Conferencing of claims used to be done strictly on paper.  Now we are basically only going by computer via the LCAT. We have been as frustrated as you about the back log and slow response to our appeals, but we finally have the means and their motivation to get caught up, mainly because of the sizeable liability building for them.  

Also, please be sure to go the distance to meet our burden of proof when making your appeal!  The computer era can make it very simple to support our claim.  But as a Local Chairman and/or claimant, you need to supply the snapshots, employee history information, phone logs, etc., necessary to support our burden of proof (as the moving party in a penalty claim dispute) when initially progressing an appeal from your level.  Otherwise, by the time our office is discussing the appeal in conference, that documentation may not be available any longer.  We are always here to assist you in this endeavor, so please don’t be afraid to ask questions.

I hope this clears up your concerns for the state of your older LCAT claims.