Age-old 'grease monkey' label hampers technician recruitment

DETROIT (Aug. 22, 2016) — On Monster.com, the giant national career website, dozens of new-vehicle dealers are embroiled in a bidding war of sorts for certified automotive repair technicians.

Some auto dealerships are offering starting salaries as high as $100,000 per year and $3,000 signing bonuses.

The job requirements have morphed along with advancing technology in today's new vehicles. Required skills now include strong math ability, solid writing and communications skills, logical thinking and diagnostic talent.

But that age-old industry image—or is it scourge?—of the “grease monkey” stubbornly persists in some quarters—most notably among the parents of high school students contemplating careers fixing vehicles.

One reason that image persists is that some of the lowest rungs on the service technician's career ladder involve dirty jobs at close to minimum wage.

It's common for students without auto maker factory training or certifications to get their hands dirty changing oil, replacing tires and doing other entry-level jobs at a dealership while they take classes, either at vocational schools or from vehicle manufacturers.

"The only real way to get techs anymore is hiring younger folks to a quick lube-type position and giving them hands-on experience and then manufacturer training and maybe even getting them to go to vocational school to take some basic courses,” said Doug McLeish, service manager at Nash Chevrolet in Lawrenceville, Ga. “You grow your own, so to speak.”

Mike Bammer, an instructor at the Lapeer County Education and Technology Center in Attica, Mich., said: “One of my things is trying to convince students' parents that it is a high-tech job now.”

Mr. Bammer, who trains high school students to work on diesel-powered trucks, admitted “the grease monkey image has stuck with us.” But he counters parents' grease-monkey arguments with success stories of some of his graduates.

“I've got a student right now who is 23 years old,” Mr. Bammer noted. “He is earning his A.A. degree through an apprenticeship program and he's making $85,000 per year.”

It's unclear where the term “grease monkey” originated, but popular lore places its birth in England during the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines were used in factories to power machinery on the shop floor. Children were tasked with greasing axles, chains, sprockets and other moving parts. Like little monkeys, so to speak, they'd often crawl in tight spaces and along the ceilings, emerging covered with grease.

That, of course, has little to do with repairing today's vehicles.

The term “grease monkey” is heard frequently at Universal Technical Institute (UTI), a for-profit technician training school based in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a dozen campuses in the U.S. UTI trains technicians in automotive, diesel, marine, collision, motorcycle or NASCAR work. The school had 13,200 students enrolled last fall and has graduated about 200,000 students in its 50 years.

“That's a challenge we're constantly working to overcome by educating parents and counselors about the high-tech nature of today's service techs,” said Carlos DellaMaddalena, the school's external communications director.

“Today, our techs spend almost as much time in front of a computer doing diagnostic work or analysis as they do under the hood. That perception has not become widespread yet,” he added.

Casey Knecht, assistant chair for automotive service technology at Daytona State College in Daytona Beach, Fla., said parents can be an issue when their children are considering a career in automotive repair.

“The students are convinced when they come here. It's the parents that sometimes need convincing,” he said.

“We have a lot of fairly advanced equipment here that helps to show the parents that it's no longer just a few hand tools and a paperback repair manual. We've got scan tools and laser alignment machines and all sorts of tools that show them how advanced the field has become.”

Nelly Colon, 24, a Nissan certified master technician at Ron Bouchard's Nissan in Lancaster, Mass., said her parents weren't initially convinced that fixing cars for a living was the right career for her.

“They were definitely asking if I was sure,” said Ms. Colon, who is the youngest certified master technician at her car dealership. “They said, ‘It's a job with heavy lifting. You're a female.' That kind of thing played into it. But it was accepted.”

Ms. Colon, a 2012 UTI graduate, said it's up to the technician to be a grease monkey or not. “I kind of do a little bit of everything. I have messy situations, but what it really comes down to is the work ethic of the technician.

“If you have tools everywhere and grease all over your face, that's you. I do transmission and engine replacements. I do head gaskets. I do timing chains.

“But I keep things clean and organized. It all just depends how the technician works.”

The need for automotive technicians will remain strong in the coming years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, with more than 1.2 million jobs available in service departments, body shops and in the motorcycle and marine industries.

General Motors Co. alone, with roughly 4,200 dealerships, has a constant need to fill 2,500 open jobs per year, based on growth, retirements and employee turnover.

Meanwhile, at Nash Chevrolet, the store's help-wanted ad for technicians is going unanswered, according to Mr. McLeish, the service manager, with a hint of frustration in his voice.

He's offering a $2,500 signing bonus for a certified, experienced technician. He'll pay relocation expenses and tuition for less-experienced applicants. In fact, the list of incentives for the two open tech positions is eye-popping.

Nash Chevrolet's top technician earned $125,000 last year. The dealership's service department completed about 1,800 repair orders in April and booked roughly $300,000 in sales.

Mr. McLeish said he's starting to work with local high schools and trade schools to get younger students interested in a career at his store. But he's finding it tough going.

“It's not just our industry. I talk to guys in plumbing, electrical, HVAC. It's such a stigma—people look negatively on students who go to a trade school,” he said.

“I think in the near future a skilled tradesperson will be more valuable to society than your average college graduate with a bachelor's degree or [the average] business executive.”

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This report appeared in Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.