Passion is the key for the automotive industry, and in some regards we are lacking, writes IAME CEO Peter Blanshard.
Within the last month I wrote CEO News for the IAME’s Member Newsletter, and I am afraid to say that I was so passionate about what I wrote I will be covering some of the same subjects in this issue. I believe the first point is the word PASSION – we as an industry should enjoy what we do and at the same time make money out of it. I have also mentioned in nearly every CEO News that to stem our skills shortage we have to take on apprentices and retain them.
This retention, and an apprentice assisting by encouraging friends and family to follow suit in apprenticeships, starts with their enjoyment of, and passion for, their work and ends with their remuneration.
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Keeping the farm together
I was in a shop last month, and the business owner met me within the workshop and I opened my enquiry asking “how was business?”. He exclaimed he had a ‘yard full of pigs’ and therefore work was ‘absolutely crap’. This wonderful declaration was in clear earshot of a newly inducted apprentice… how good would
he feel going home after his third week of work and telling mum and dad his shop was ‘full of pigs’ and ‘work was crap’? If he’d ever wanted to stifle a young person’s enthusiasm, this employer had excelled.
A better basic wage
The next point I would like to make regarding retention is the financial rewards to an apprentice while learning his or
her craft. These young people live in the same cities as we do, and their modes of transport cost the same to register and ensure. They put fuel in their cars at the same price as we all do. They buy food at the same shops as we do, and they possibly entertain themselves in the same licensed establishments we do.
The major difference is a qualified mechanic is often paid twice the award wage. The poor apprentice receives nothing but award wage – the lowest in all apprenticeship trades. As an industry we need to fight for a better basic award wage for our apprentices. Technology advances each and every day, but an apprentice wage is less than can be earned flipping hamburgers or packing boxes. It is disgraceful to expect an 18-year-old apprentice to survive on $13.62 per hour. I honestly believe the clue to acquiring and retaining apprentices is that we need to speak more of the opportunities within our industry and pay a realistic wage for their endeavours.
Eyes on the road
Speaking of technology changing, there is now a real flurry to achieve the next milestone in road fatality. We certainly had our safety cells with high-strength steels. We had our introduction of autonomous emergency braking, lane-departure warning and other ADAS features, so our new chapter is going to be around driver monitoring for driver fatigue. The two systems are known as DMS (Driver Monitoring Systems) and DSS (Driver State Sensoring).
You wouldn’t be wrong to know that some vehicles already have an introductory to these programs in the cars we drive today. However, what is planned by 2031 is absolutely mind-blowing, and I believe we have upwards of 17 major companies pursuing the manufacture of sensors to achieve this goal of eliminating driver fatigue.
Road to the future
On a different note, but on a similar circumstance in that I have discussed this before, the question of servicing a vehicle to best operate using E10 fuel is back on the political horizon. I recently had the opportunity to address the federal government cross-bench with regards to ethanol-enriched fuels and how they could add to not only jobs in Australia, but also assist with environmental concerns, as the majority of cars today are built with the ECU mapping firmly aligned to E10 fuels. In the rest of the world where these globalised cars operate, there will be no option but to burn E10.
Therefore, their mapping is more defined around the 10 per cent ethanol mixture and RON. You would be doing yourself an injustice by trying to talk the consumer out of servicing their new car with burning E10 in mind. In October 2022, Standards Australia produced the workings of the Australian industry on a foundation of EV electric work. I was lucky to chair the subcommittee on the RS&R sector and, proudly, all our recommendations were well received and are now published. Working on EVs, as we all know, is perfectly safe when done the right way and when the vehicle has no faults. It is when something has gone wrong, such as a motor vehicle collision or when safeguards have not been properly engaged with that risk increases.
I am horrified to say I have spoken with many people in the automotive industry who tell me they have attended training courses that have either lacked substance or quality. More so, the information our practitioners hold is effectively no different to when they walked into the classroom. This is a blatant waste of time and money, but more importantly it will get someone killed.
As an industry we must stop utilising the services of these training providers who have no idea and are training purely for milking a source of revenue. There were many items discussed around best practice when we were building the information bank for the Australian standards, and how we can now have a training course that doesn’t touch upon some of the safety prerequisites is beyond me. I ask each and every one of you that, if you attend a course that has been poorly written or delivered, you report to ASQA so immediate action be taken against the RTO delivering this potentially lethal lack of information.