BNSF GUIDELINES FOR TY&E EMPLOYEE ATTENDANCE

BNSF TY&E employees are key members of our community, and have a legitimate expectation of reasonable opportunity to be off from work. And, along with all other members of our community, BNSF TY&E people share certain responsibilities to the community as a whole. One of these basic responsibilities is to be "full-time" employees. The company commits that each TY&E employee in unassigned service fulfills his or her responsibility to maintain "full-time" status, in general, by laying off not more than twenty-five percent of weekdays and weekends in any three month period.

Local members of the BNSF transportation management team are specifically empowered to apply these Guidelines considering special individual circumstances. Managers should never act in a rigid or "wooden" manner, and in every case should use "common sense." Application of these Guidelines also must yield to any conflicting labor agreement provision. We also invite and encourage local union leaders to give their input in the application of these Guidelines in individual cases, and, generally, to be "part of the process."

BNSF provides for and encourages each employee who knows in advance of a need to be off to request a pre-approved layoff. An employee may do so up to ninety days in advance, and will receive a prompt answer. Once a pre-approved layoff is granted, the company may not cancel it without the employee's consent.

More specific principles for applying these Guidelines follow:

· Each employee's compliance with the Guidelines' standard of "full-time" employment will be measured on a "rolling" three month basis, to accommodate individual employees' needs to "bunch" days off.

· An employee's continuous fulfillment of the Guidelines' "full-time" standard for any twelve months completely clears his or her record of any previous failure to fulfill the full-time standard.

· The company's basic measurement of full-time status considers all time an employee is not marked off, and also jury duty, bereavement leave, engineer recertification, and layoff union or company business, to be the same as on-duty time.

· Periods of vacation, personal leave, other paid leave not already mentioned here, layoff on miles, and foot of the board are removed from the measurement.

· In every case, local supervisors should consider special circumstances and use common sense in applying the Guidelines.

· We encourage any employee identified as failing to maintain full-time status under these Guidelines to seek the involvement of his/her local chairman. Local managers should also encourage such involvement by local chairmen in order to promote fair and common sense application of the Guidelines.