Part 1 of Series: Are starting wages making the tech shortage worse?
Eric Reid wants to do his part to reduce the shortage of collision repair technicians he’s always hearing and reading about. But Reid, the collision repair instructor at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Muscle Shoals, Ala., is getting discouraged watching his top students move on to other fields because of low starting wages at body shops.
“They’ll offer them $6.50 or $7 an hour,” says Reid. “An adult, anyone who’s skilled, can’t afford to work for that. That’s a slap in the face. It just kills their ambition.”
Reid’s program has produced the winner of the Alabama SkillsUSA collision repair competition for each of the past three years. But, he says, none of these three best-in-state entry-level technicians is working in the collision repair field.
“The most I found as an offer was $8.50 an hour,” says Eric Sherrill, who competed in the national SkillsUSA Championships this summer after winning the Alabama collision repair state competition. “I can’t do that. I’m making $14 at a factory painting semitrailers. I have a family, a wife and son I have to provide for, and I can’t take $8.50 an hour to help somebody paint.”
Wes Bishop of Russellville, Ala., faced a similar situation after being named best-in-state in 2003. He’s continued working as a mechanical technician because he couldn’t find collision repair work that would start him at much more than minimum wage.
“They looked at the experience and degree like it wasn’t even there,” Bishop says of his body shop interviews. “I may as well have walked in off the street. When I went into this course of study, there was a big demand for it. They said, ‘We need more technicians. We need more technicians.’ But they didn’t say: ‘We’re not going to pay them anything.’ ... It’s just a shame that I went to college. I enjoy doing the body work more, but the money isn’t there.”
Reid, who says the 2002 Alabama SkillsUSA winner in collision repair is working for UPS, recognizes that the situation may be better in larger communities. But Steve White, an instructor and chairman of the collision repair program at Oregon’s Portland Community College, says he and his students have faced similar challenges, particularly with the slowdown in the economy during the past few years. He recalls one particularly bright, motivated student’s story.
“He got hired by a shop and worked there for probably close to two years and never got over $8 an hour. He finally just threw in the towel and went to work for a wrecking yard ... It’s an example of someone who didn’t progress [in the industry] at the rate he was capable of progressing and got disgusted and took off.”
Ron Ray, executive director of the I-CAR Education Foundation, says this is certainly an issue that has been discussed at gatherings of collision repair instructors from around the country as they look for ways—other than harping on shop owners to offer more money—to keep entry-level technicians in the industry.
The results of the foundation’s national study released in August found that on average, shops said they expected to pay entry-level new hires $9.55 per hour or $382 per week, about half the wages of a journeyman. The survey asked shop owners how long they felt it would take that entry-level technician to be fully productive. Responses ranged from six months to 10 years, but two years was the most common answer and the average was 3.6 years.
“Production collision repair technicians are paid, on average, better than comparable trades and have excellent income potential,” the study concludes. But it also points out that “competition for entry-level workers, especially from other service industries, is expected to increase.”
While Reid and his former students in Alabama are not alone in being discouraged by low starting wages in the industry, it isn’t a universal problem. Nicolaus Ranker of Lakewood, Colo., is a good example of excellence being rewarded. Ranker has competed at the national collision repair SkillsUSA Championships twice—winning the high-school championship last year and finishing second in the post-secondary level competition this summer.
This past spring, he started as a helper at a large dealership collision repair shop, working under a journeyman technician but largely seeing his jobs through on his own. His wage: $11 an hour.
“I get paid hourly, not on any type of commission, which is sort of nice,” Ranker says. “I think it’s fairly good compared to what a lot of other helpers are paid. I think I’m paid adequately for where I am.”
Ray, White and others say Ranker’s experience is not unique; there are ways that students, instructors, shops and even vendors and insurers are getting involved to reduce the number of collision repair graduates who decide to jump ship to another industry.
