I want fair pay for Automotive Technicians. As an Automotive Technician there are many of us working under a "Flat-Rate" pay system. This system pays a Technician based on automotive companies recommended labor times. For example, a complete brake job on a car pays three hours to complete according to manufactures labor times. A Technician can complete that job in three hours and be paid for the exact amount of time it took him to do the repair, that is only if everything in the brake job went according plan an no issues came up during the process. But lets say the Technician ran into some issues or things didn't come apart as intended and it ended up taking him five hours to complete the job. The mechanic still gets paid for that three hours specified by the manufacturer.

Every automobile and Technician is different. Sometimes you can beat the flat rate times other times you can barely meet the flat rate time. Couple this with being pulled off the job for other issues around the dealership that Technicians don't get paid for. Also, shop politics can dictate the type of jobs you get- some are just quick jobs that pay decently and others are long hard jobs that don't pay much at all. There are multiple things technicians do throughout the day that they do not get paid for such as: cleaning the building, taking out the trash, pricing out parts, and speaking with Service Advisors.

Technicians are forced to be at the shop during slow times (with little to no customers) for up to fifty-five or more hours a week just waiting around for work to show up, and only end up taking home twenty hours that week. Even the best technicians make less than forty hours in slow times, less customers equals less work, which equals less pay. Depending on the Automotive technicians hourly rate they can even be paid under the state minimum wage in slow times.

The Automotive pay system needs to be changed. It is an outdated system that benefits the corporations and businesses by allowing them to keep an employee at work for twelve hours a day and only pay them for five. It can be hard to raise a family and keep a steady budget working on the Flat-Rate system.You never know if you will be able to afford your bills that month or not. It brings a lot of anxiety to the automotive technician and their family if they do not make enough hours in a month. I am hoping everyone realizes the severity of the neglectful ways that automotive technicians are being treated, especially during a pandemic (where most shops and dealerships remained open).

But you can help, we are reaching out to Gretchen Whitmer, Gary Peters, and Debbie Stabenow in order to show them the cruel ways that the automotive industry treats their most valuable assets. Our solution is to require that automotive businesses pay our technicians hourly or at least give our technicians a guaranteed amount of money each week.