What makes you think any mechanic is making less than minimum wage at their job?
I don’t like the flat rate deal either but it’s a stretch to define it that way. While some book times may be aggressive, especially for warranty work, overall my mechanic friends seem to book more time than they are physically present at the job. In the end, they make a decent wage and as they got older, wiser and more experienced, they made a pretty decent living doing it.
The employer can define the job the way they please within the labor laws. Piece work is usually set by some achievable standard. The minimum being above minimum wage. The harder and faster you work, the greater the reward. If you consistently fail to achieve the minimum, I have a prediction for you. Many states are ‘at will’ employment and all have some means to address underperforming.
I would love to see what kind of business would result if the service center paid mechanics a salary, provided tools needed to do the job and had profit sharing. Mechanics would be beating down the doors to work there and you’d have one seriously skilled, motivated team doing the work. I bet it would be very successful with minimal turnover…but for now, just a guess on my part…
Even the valets who jockey the cars around, and the young women working at the front desk, are making–at least–minimum wage. In my area, dealership mechanics typically make $100k, or more, annually.
Almost every mechanic I have ever known, not all but most, would NOT want to work for an hourly rate, they are quite happy flagging 60, 70, some over 100 hours a week for a 50 hour work week… You do realize that a tech working 40 hours a week that is making $25 per flat rate hour that can flag 80 hours in that 40 hours worked, has an effective pay rate of $50 an hour…If he is slower and turns 60 flat rate hours, then his effective rate is $37.50 an hour…
I am one that preferred an hourly rate, but mainly cause I am very OCD with cars and can pull the dash, engine, trans whatever and reinstall it with very few come backs, and when done everything will be back 100% or better, I have had dealers go behind me and couldn’t tell (other than the new parts) anyone had ever been there, I never have left over parts or bolt etc, most of the time I am installing missing bolt from the last person that worked on it, plus I always enjoyed getting the vehicles that other shops including dealerships could not find the problem, I was a problem solver… I enjoyed figuring out that the engine had the wrong pistons and heads making the compression ratio way to low with a way to big performance camshaft causing the engine to run very poorly, or whatever, so I was better off with hourly pay, but I could also make some killer money on flat rate, my best day I made over $800 in one day, back around 1998 doing a bunch of suspension work, and that was with no roll overs… I just enjoyed the hard to diag type of work… I get bored easy… lol
Not political Dave but economic theory dredged up from about 1870 expecting a labor revolt against the employers. Never worked then or now. Well mao made it work after murdering millions.
Too bad all states aren’t like that. My daughter would made good money tips working at a sea-food restaurant during the summer near Hampton Beach. It was a higher-end restaurant with higher prices and thus higher tips. Hourly wage was about half minimum wage. But the tips were so good on a 5-hour dinner shift she could easily make $200 in tips. Loved the job because she only worked 2-3 days a week.
Minnesota screwed up pretty bad. I don’t understand it but I will often tip in cash even though I pay with a debit card. What they do with it is not discussed.
When I was a bus boy in high school, at the end of the night the waitresses would come and give me some coin from their tips. They said the promptness in clearing tables and keeping them supplied in plates etc.helped them. Nice gesture but I saw how important tips were.
I always tip with cash. 99% of the time I pay with credit card.
Almost every year there’s a news report of some restaurant in NH where the owner is keeping the tips or some portion of the tip (which is against the law).
If you have to ask then you probably should not get into widget building at all…
You lost the perspective of the issue… It’s not a matter of being paid for piece work or not, it’s a matter of earn income…
But since you did ask, these locations pay more per hour on average than your piece work would pay if the employees built your base of 400 widgets.
To earn the equivalent of the state’s minimum wage they would have to build 480 of your widgets… So these high producing widget makers would not be rewarded for their extra effort, but just make the minimum wage… Back in the day, you would have been called a “Robber Baron”
So they would probably rather flip burgers and not work in your Sweat Shop…
Since I know you do not own a sweatshop, I hope you know I am only pulling your leg…
And flat-rate pay abides by this law. If you are clocked in for 38 hours and minimum wage is $20, your pay will be at least $760. If you only flag 30 hours in that period but your flat-rate pay is $30/hr, your pay will be $900. The only way flat-rate is a losing proposition is if you are working somewhere with a stupidly low minimum wage. You have the freedom to write your own ticket. If you can’t handle the job, is the problem with the job or with you?
Some of us are good at what we do and expect to be compensated according to our output. 26 years ago I took a job at a shop. The policy there was to pay a new hire hourly for the first 6 months and then switch to flat rate. For the first 6 months any hours flagged over clock time were paid out as a bonus. According to the owner’s wife, I was the first tech who ever made bonus in the first month. I did quite well at that shop, only leaving to take a better position at a different shop that I eventually owned for 8 years.
When I went back into the regular work force I jumped at the chance to work flat rate again because I knew what I could consistently produce. Again, I did quite well, until I was taken off flat-rate and made shop manager.
Isn’t that true for everyone everywhere? My wife is quite successful in her career. Do you think a VP at a university only works 40 hours a week? My buddy is a longshoreman supervisor at the port, guess how many hours a month he puts in? You’re not going to find success by punching a time clock 9 to 5. If you want to be a little better than everyone else, you have to work a little harder.
Absolutely. I consider myself lucky that I don’t have any ill effects from 30+ years in the shop. I’ve escaped the bad knees, back trouble, etc that haunt this trade. I needed a triple bypass at 52, but I can’t attribute that to the job.
I had an employee that constantly complained about his feet killing him, to the point he needed to sit down a couple times an hour. I told him to buy some real work shoes instead of the $25 Payless specials he was wearing, but it fell on deaf ears. Those of us who stand all day need good footwear.
Two problems with that. One, you still need to weed out the ones who don’t have the drive to be productive. Two, I’ve only ever worked at one shop that provided tooling that was on the same level of what I expected or what I would buy myself. I’ve seen a few shops that “provide tools”, good luck with that quality.
My son spent 2 1/2 years of high school working in an Italian restaurant for minimum wage and they pooled their tips. Worked out to about $27/hour.
Weeding out slackers is a universal issue regardless of the method of compensation.
Perhaps it wasn’t clear but my expectation for a shop providing tools is that they are of sufficient quality to endure the type of normal use they would encounter for the type of work being done. We don’t buy cheap tools where I work, that would be self-defeating. Because the employees have profit sharing, and thus a stake in the profitability of the company, they protect those tools and chastise anyone that would treat them poorly. They do not want to see company money wasted on careless use of tools or someone that walks off with them.
Just to be balanced- there are issues with piece work laziness too. Slackers in the salary/profit sharing world are quickly called out for not pulling their weight by their fellow employees. However, when you are compensated by the relative amount of work you can complete and there is a finite amount of it, you want as much as you can possibly get. Therefore, a slacker can be beneficial to the hard worker since the hard worker then gets a bigger share of the available work. Slackers may not be viewed in the same light under those circumstances…
The biggest problem I see with the flat rate, piece work approach to auto mechanics is the issue with favoritism. There are “gravy jobs” that are easy to beat the book times. And those can be doled out in a way that favors certain employees over others. If you keep getting the b ugger jobs that are difficult to meet or exceed the time allotted, or you get the tough electrical problems that are difficult to chase down, it isn’t a fair arrangement. Imagine if you got a salary that was equivalent to your 80 hour week. Your wage would not fluctuate with the amount or type of work being done. You could be the guy that tackles all the really difficult work (i.e. challenging and interesting) without being punished for that.
Telematics and NVH complaints under warranty were the worst jobs, in my experience
They ALWAYS paid far less than the time required to repair
Not one single exception
Ever
It was often difficult to “make up” that lost time
Another big problem . . . for the mechanics . . . were when management decided to goodwill a repair that was out of any warranty period. In those cases, the mechanic got paid warranty time Great for customers, but someone is most definitely paying for that free lunch
That said, it’s still possible to make decent money in the long run
Even if you don’t plan to stay at a dealership long term, it’s a good place to learn skills, imo
Hmm, on another thread I mentioned a drive-in restaurant, was flagged for being off topic. This thread has devolved into hourly vs piece work vs working for tips!
In the 60s I delivered pizza and chicken, minimum wage plus tips. Back then tips were nearly non-existent.
The issue with the being paid a salary for almost double what you work is when you have the slow times, and those 80 hour flagged weeks drops down to 60 hour weeks, but you are still paying the 80 hours, now you either have to absorb that lost payout or make it up somewhere else… It is hard to put mechanics that work for the private sector on a salary due to the ups and downs and keep everyone happy… Their is no real world perfect pay structure… The other reason not to pay someone double pay is a lot of guys will take advantage and not turn out the same 80 hour as they are being paid, flat rate is a good motivator, the harder and faster you work, the more money you can make… Down side to that is that can and does also bread short cuts for the less skilled… Like I said, I could have made a ton more money on flat rate, but I enjoyed the hourly side of it more, every is different…
And for the most part, your bigger shops have a guarantee so even if you have nothing all week you at least make something…
I have said it before, Dealerships play by their own set of rules…
That’s right. If I’m the owner, from that perspective, I am now paying you fairly for your expertise to be available. It’s up to me to make sure we generate enough business to keep you busy. And I think that will be a champagne problem if we establish “our” business as one of the top notch in the area due to our revised approach to attracting and keeping top level employees.
When times get slow for any business, that is the time to work on infrastructure or training or any number of other aspects of the business that may need attention. That’s my point, as an employee, you are not punished for these events if they occur. The business can have ups and downs in activity level but on average still be quite profitable over the longer haul.
Until someone comes along and upsets the game. I can see the old guard losing a bunch of their key employees when those top performers get wind there’s a shop down the road treating their employees differently…
Great for customers, but someone is most definitely paying for that free lunch