Conference Launches Strategy to Fill Critical Shortage of Technicians
8 September 1998
National Auto Repair Leaders Draft Action Plan for New Image and Consumer Confidence; Conference Launches Strategy to Fill Critical Shortage of Technicians
ANAHEIM, Calif.--(AutomotiveWire)--Sept. 4, 1998--Many people would picture an auto mechanic as a burly, insensitive grease monkey, possessing few skills while speaking an incomprehensible language. But on this Labor Day, that picture is rapidly changing, and nobody wants it to change faster than members of the automotive-repair field themselves.
A group of 140 representatives of the automotive-repair market, hailing from automotive parts and manufacturing, parts and service, together with educators, government regulators, consumer advocates and insurance executives, gathered in Anaheim and began their Labor Day holiday with plans to upgrade the field's image and attract new members into its ranks.
The summit was the first gathering of representatives from such diverse organizations to tackle problems facing automotive repair since 1992.
"I think people came with an open mind and a commitment to get something done," said Carole Glade, executive director of the National Coalition for Consumer Education and facilitator for the summit. "I think the diversity of the crowd contributed to the cross-pollination of ideas."
The conference, titled "Automotive Repair Leadership 2000: Strategies for Success," is just the beginning of an ongoing alliance to tackle the serious challenges facing the industry.
Technology has made automotive repair an increasingly demanding career, though public perception continues to regard it as an unskilled blue-collar job. As a result, fewer young people, their parents, or even teachers and career counselors consider car repair a viable pursuit at precisely the time the industry needs them most.
If summit leaders are successful, efforts will reach far beyond replacing the term "mechanic" with "technician" and extend into turning public distrust of the industry into an attitude of respect for a highly skilled profession.
The conference produced an action plan of solutions featuring the following points:
-- Form a task force to create a marketwide alliance. This will
encourage individuals and their organizations to act as a team,
addressing issues of recruitment, training and education, and
professional image on a national level.
-- Develop a central source of materials, possibly on the Internet,
for recruiting young people, including a comparative analysis of
salaries in the industry and related fields.
-- Focus recruitment of under-represented groups, such as women, who
currently constitute only 2 percent of the automotive-repair work
force.
-- Launch a public-education campaign promoting a positive image for
the industry.
-- Develop national industrywide standards for training, customer
service, ethical practices and compensation. These action plans
address problems that affect this market nationwide, yet the
Anaheim conference was one of only three meetings of its kind
during the last decade, said Marty Keller, chief of the
California Bureau of Automotive Repair. "The idea here was to not
only learn what is going on across the nation, so we don't have
to reinvent the wheel, but to coordinate all these efforts to
create synergies and efficiencies," Keller said.
The conference identified improved professional self-image as the common denominator of any solution. It quickly dominated a roundtable discussion that followed viewing of videotaped person-on-the-street interviews asking people what they thought of automotive technicians.
One man compared them to used-car salesmen. Another interviewee said he pictured oily shops where there was "a lot of cussing going on," while a third said, "They're all a bunch of crooks."
This attitude frustrates automotive-repair educators. They are trying to attract more women and men to a job where the training requirements have long since outgrown a few high school vocational classes. Yet parents are often the ones steering their children away from the profession with their outmoded perceptions of auto repair.
Richard Jazwin, director of education for the Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix, shared a typical reaction. "When we call parents up and tell them there's a student who has potential, who has an aptitude in this area, the normal response is, `What did he do wrong?'" Jazwin said.
The answer is, nothing. In fact, an ability to understand the complexities behind the marriage of computerized technology and internal combustion will become an incredibly valuable, and lucrative, job skill.
"I don't think the average driver understands that they have more technology at his or her fingertips than Neil Armstrong had at his while landing on the moon," said Paul Baffico, president of the Sears Automotive Group.
Currently, there are more than 100 different categories of automotive technicians, and the field has room for 150,000 computer- control technicians alone.
Overall, as it enters the next millennium the industry needs to increase the current number of automotive technicians by 38 percent to service the 2 million new cars that hit the nation's roads each year. People willing to fill that demand for trained technicians can expect to earn between $40,000 and $60,000 a year once they get established.
But getting prospective technicians interested will mean cleaning up the automotive-repair industry's reputation. For example, most parents would probably feel quite proud if their son or daughter became a stockbroker, a career associated with wealth and even glamour. However, this image persists despite the fact that fraud frequently rocks Wall Street, noted conference participant Cheryle Johnson Stabler of Akso Nobel.
Automotive-repair managers aren't comparing themselves to stock brokers, but they feel unfairly treated by the media, which feeds on consumers' lack of up-to-date information about the industry. Many conference participants agreed that the solution was better education for consumers.
After a home, a vehicle is often the second-largest investment in a person's life, a monetary commitment that reflects the complexity of building a modern automobile. Yet many consumers think nothing, for example, of paying a $70 repair bill for their $250 VCR, but balk at paying $70 to repair their $25,000 car.
This is just one of the communication challenges facing the automotive-repair industry. Within the next few years, people will start seeing evidence of this new effort in the media, in schools and especially in their local automotive-service facilities.
"The job is not only fixing cars, but fixing the public's perception of who repairs those cars," said Johan Gallo, president of the Automotive Repair Coalition. "Our problems are bigger than each of us, but not bigger than all of us," Gallo said.
All attendees were asked to fill out "Commitment to Action" forms at the conclusion of the event and submit them to the conference coordinator before their departure.
Updates on conference action items and the progress of initiatives to recruit and train more automotive technicians and improve the field's image will be made available by the Coordinating Committee for Automotive Repair online at www.ccar-greenlink.org.
