Industry Insight with John Yoswick
—John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He is the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com). Contact him by email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.
CIC Committees Tackle Ongoing Shortage of Collision Repair Technicians
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It’s not uncommon during discus- appreciated. They leave because of sions within the collision repair in- management, period.” She said she has seen technical dustry about the technician shortage with Ed Attanasio for body shop representatives to education teachers “work hard every point to what they see as the inad- day to instill the passion they have equate entry-level skills of students for this industry into those students, completing auto body training pro- and then when they get out into the grams. Educators and others speaking at this spring’swith Collision Industry Ed Attanasio Conference (CIC), however, offered their own perspectives on the issue. “We do not have a recruiting problem. We have a retention problem,” Virginia Oden, a trade and industrial education program specialist with Oklahoma Career Tech, said at with Ed Attanasio Virginia Oden of Oklahoma Career Tech said the meeting held in Oklahoma City. how entry-level technicians are treated when “How we treat our employees is key. they enter the industry impacts whether they If you don’t provide them with opstay in the industry portunity, they will look elsewhere. They will tell you it’s because of industry, they are treated terribly. the dollar. But people do not leave They may leave your shop and go with Ed Attanasio a job they love and where they feel down the street to the next shop.
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But if they’re treated terribly at that shop, they will leave the industry. “They can get better work and better hours, with less hard labor, working at Amazon,” Oden said. “So it’s important once we get them recruited and passionate about what we do, we’ve got to treat them with respect. It’s not about ‘kids today.’ It’s every single person who’s breathing. We all want to be treated with respect.” Speaking from the floor at CIC, Dane Rounkles of American Honda said he once went to a collision shop in the Southeast to visit a student interning there while completing the Honda Professional Automotive Career Training program at a local school. “He wasn’t there, and I asked, ‘Did he not show up?’” Rounkles said. “No, he was mowing the shop owner’s yard. When I spoke to the
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owner of the body shop about this, he said, ‘I had to pay my dues. They’ve got to pay theirs. As long as the school keeps sending people, I never have to mow my yard.’ My point: Do not assume these kids need to do what you and I did.” Bud Center, chairman of the CIC Talent Pool and Education Committee, said too often he hears shops and schools pointing to the other as the cause of the technician shortage. “There needs to be more conversation. People need to get on the same page,” Center said. To that end, the discussion at CIC included panelists sharing ideas about ways to improve the technician shortage. Oden said collision repair and other technical training programs in her state hold summer camps that give fifth and sixth grade students some exposure to the differ-
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