Techs' strike in Chicago highlights work-force issues affecting all dealerships

For seven weeks over the summer, 2,000 service technicians went on strike at 129 new-vehicle dealerships in the Chicago area, seeking better pay and working conditions.

One dealer estimates the walkout cost his store hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost service revenue. Another calls the strike "unnecessary ... devastating" and says it left him "bitter."

Yet the terms of the strike's settlement deserve attention because they address challenges that confront all dealership service departments — not just unionized shops in one city — as they seek to recruit and retain productive technicians.

The stakes are higher than ever for dealerships in the competition for techs. As new-vehicle sales cool, fixed operations will account for a greater share of dealership profits in coming years. The chronic shortage of technicians will grow more acute as those now on the job retire.

And as the cars and trucks coming into the shop become ever more complex, the training and skills required of techs will have to be more sophisticated as well. So the status of service technicians becomes increasingly critical.

The greatest sources of job dissatisfaction identified by the survey respondents: their compensation (flat-rate pay plans were especially reviled) and a feeling that the dealership and automaker they work for don't properly value what they do.

"People are leaving in herds," says Dan Costley, a journeyman technician at Garber Fox Lake Toyota who took part in the Chicago strike. "The younger guys are seeing the career is not what it's cut out to be.

"I've got two friends who left in the past year and went back to college," he says. "Both are smart as whips, but they're done."

John Thompson is chairman of the automotive technology department at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, which offers one of the nation's top academic programs for training dealership service employees. He calls the employment climate for service techs "a disaster waiting to happen."

"We have an aging work force, and young men and women aren't trained and ready yet," Thompson says. "You're seeing it slowly unfold, but it will quickly unfold when more and more people retire."

The situation for techs is not utterly bleak. The NADA workforce study reported that the average dealership service technician earned nearly $59,000 in 2015 — a solid middle-class income. The most skilled and experienced techs command six-figure pay.

According to the Carlisle study, the average service tech is about 40 years old and has 19 years of shop experience. Despite their complaints, 70 percent of the technicians in the survey said they expected to work at their current dealership for at least the next three years.

Tim Richards, a 21-year-old apprentice tech at Elgin Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram, is the type of young worker the industry says it wants to nurture. He says being a service technician is the career for him.

"I've always worked on cars, and I'd build and race cars," he says. "Automotive is my niche. Why not make a career at something I'm good at?"

During and after the strike, Richards says he maintained his confidence that he will become a master technician someday.

"I didn't feel worried," he says, "because with my training and ability, I would have been able to progress faster."

The new contract in Chicago aims to respond to the concerns of veteran technicians as well as those of 18- to 34-year-old workers, who NADA says represent two-thirds of newly hired techs.

But officials of Automobile Mechanics Local 701, the union that represents the striking service techs, concede they didn't get everything they wanted.

Sam Cicinelli, the local's directing business representative, says the contract will guarantee technicians as much as 36 paid weekly hours of work, up from 34 — but the union wanted 40.

Cicinelli says most veteran technicians represented by the local work as much as 50 hours a week. But they often earn less because of the flat-rate system they work under, which pays experienced techs primarily by the repair job rather than the hour.

Contract provisions lengthening the guaranteed workweek and offering other incentives only partially relieve that disparity, Cicinelli says.

Technician Costley calls flat-rate pay "a prehistoric, barbaric way of paying. They should be paying at an hourly base," he says.

Richards, the youngest tech in his shop, says Chicago-area dealers have exploited poorly paid techs in the semiskilled category, which he argues should be eliminated.

"Would you rather pay the semiskilled worker $15 an hour or pay the journeyman $35 an hour for that brake flush?" Richards says.

He notes that the new contract reduces apprenticeships from 10 to five years. But service departments need to pay more attention to the quality of apprentice training, he says.

Apprentices should be formally partnered with journeymen, he suggests, "instead of being thrown into the industry as an apprentice and learning to do everything yourself."

Otherwise, the union's Cicinelli says, the contract makes gains for younger techs, "but it's still not as good compared to other trades and other jobs."

"Electricians make $18 to $20 an hour at the entry level," he says. "A plumber has a little bucket of wrenches to invest in, and we have a toolbox the size of a condominium."

Harold Santamaria, an instructor in the automotive technology program at Truman College in Chicago, says many of his tech students who "graduated and got a job said it wasn't as rewarding as they thought it could be."

Some talented students have worked as lube techs for four years without the prospect of advancement "because they did the job too well," he says.

The Chicago dealers whose techs went on strike have complaints of their own. Greg Webb, a partner at Packey Webb Ford in Downers Grove, says the strike "cost the mechanics and us a lot of money, and neither of us is getting it back."

"The dealerships that weren't on strike had so much [service] business, they were turning it away," Webb says. "If some of my customers went to another Ford store and got taken care of properly, there's a real possibility they may not come back here."

Richard Fisher's seven dealerships in the Autobarn group endured the strike. He says the cost of the new contract will make it even harder for his company to stay competitive.

"The [pay] rates of all of our mechanics have gone up sharply," Fisher says. "Inevitably, the things we care about — giving great service to our customers and attracting young people to the business — will be stymied if our costs continue to climb."

Fisher and some other dealers worked to dissociate themselves from the dealership bargaining committee and cut their own deals with their striking techs. "We felt they were our guys first and union guys second, and we wanted to get them back to work," he says. "I felt bitter in the overall way [the strike] was managed by both sides. I feel, ultimately, the strike was unnecessary."

Even after the strike, industry observers say dealerships in Chicago and elsewhere aren't properly preparing their service departments and training their shop employees for innovations such as emerging electric and autonomous vehicles.

Steve Tomory, who teaches automotive technology at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, Calif., predicts service technician training will need to become based more heavily on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) topics. A tech's job, he says, "may become more of a salary-based position."

In Chicago and everywhere else, says Thompson of Pittsburg State, the primary responsibility for redefining the role of service technicians to accommodate a changing industry rests with dealers and automakers.

"The manufacturers will have to partner up with the dealers and say, 'How do we grow this work force?'" Thompson says.

Rob Gehring, a fixed operations consultant in Huron, Ohio, agrees.

"I have said technician is a good career many times," Gehring says. "But the attitude needs to change at the dealership and manufacturer level."

He adds: "I wouldn't be a technician."