LAYOFFS!

[Chad Michael]

Reminds me of a quote that I saved....

"The only thing you need to know is that if there's a smart, sensible and efficient way to do something, the management of this company will run as fast as possible in the opposite direction."

 

[Mike N]

I agree with what your saying and me and you are probably in the same boat. I'm one of two highest paid techs in the shop as well. Fact is they have to get three 15 dollar and hour guys to replace me as none of the other guys bill even a third of what I bill. Not to mention they don't have even a quarter of the training (that they paid for) or a fraction of the 25 years of experiance. But the one caviat to all that is that management is basically incapable of making an intelligent decision so who know. I do know they know who makes the money in the shop and your probably there too.

Same boat, different shop. Immediate management knows who is capable of what in our shop, but upper management (sitting in their nice cozy office well outside the shop environment) only sees numbers on a spreadsheet. What they look at for us techs is efficiency percentage (hours billed vs hours worked), not total # of dollars the tech generates for the shop. Now the problem here is one of the younger techs has a higher percentage than me mainly because he has a couple of the hourly loober goobers working for him, and he's a gravy grabber. Any RO with a check engine light or oil leak he'll avoid like the plague. Store management knows full well that I'll work on any car you put in my stall, so the difficult stuff tends to go to me while the gravy parts hanging goes to him.

Fair? Heck no, but I'm paid alot better than him and make a fair amount of money, so I try not to let it bother me.

 

[fenderthrupeave]

Another auto tech here. No layoffs in our shop yet, but there are talks of it if business keeps going down the crapper like it currently is. Out of the five techs, I'm thinking I'd be one of the last ones to go, but being that myself and another tech are the two highest paid in the shop, they might axe one of us first in a effort to save money. The corporate mindset is why pay a guy $25/hr when we can pay someone else $15/hr and (hopefully) get the same job done, for $10 less per hour. In the long run the savings to the company would be fairly large. Never mind the fact that alot of the younger lower paid guys in the auto industry couldn't fix a sandwich, corporate is looking only at cutting expenses and gross profit in the short term.

If I am one of the ones let go, I have a lift in my home garage and a steady flow of sidework, so I don't think I'd have trouble surviving.



While it's true they cant send your job to China, they can effectively bring China to your job. What I mean by that is they can lay off the higher paid employees and bring in a bunch of younger guys and pay them less money to do the same job you used to do. Also by using cheaper materials but charging the premium price they can stick even more money in their pockets, and give you the shaft at the same time. Think it doesn't happen? I see this every day. If you're union, you may have a fighting chance, but many of us in the auto repair industry aren't.

That is why I am glad I have a STRONG local union behind me, As long as jobs keep going union it will be great. And with cheaper materials I had to most excellent pleasure of putting in than taking out 12" steel pipe in 20 foot lengths becuase of the pipe was cracking down the seem. And just so you know 12" pipe weights 50 pounds a foot, you do the math. NO MORE CHINA PIPE ALLOWED. And I know for a fact me as an apprentice at 20.50 an hour get billed to the general contractor at a jounryman wage of 50.75 and hour. And my company makes all the profits.