A recent agreement was reached with BNSF which alters the handling of what are commonly referred to as “V6” days for monthly rated employees.  Under the terms of the National Vacation Agreement, employees are allowed to split one week of vacation into single day allotments.  This was expanded in 2006 to allow for a second week of split vacation on the BNSF only.

If you are a monthly rated employee, a week of vacation consists of 6 days as the protect day is included.  The long-standing application of this agreement has been that a monthly rated employee is eligible for up to 12 days of single day vacation if he/she chose to split 2 weeks.  An employee with 5 weeks of vacation would be required to use the additional 3 weeks (18 days) of vacation as full weeks.  This meant that the associated protect days of vacation (V6s) had to be used in conjunction with those full weeks.

The recently negotiated change, which goes into effect on 1/1/24, allows for all “V6 days” to be used as floating days of vacation, so long as territory coverage is provided through an allowable exchange partner.  The net result of the change is the ability to have up to 15 single days of “floating” vacation instead of 12 for those eligible for 5 weeks of vacation (14 if you qualify for 4 weeks and 13 if you qualify for 3).