Why Techs Don’t Make Enough Money

If ever a letter to the editor stirred up controversy, this one did. An anonymous technician wrote SSGM in July, describing his frustration with the perpetually low real wages in this industry. The response was phenomenal; a couple of examples appear on page 44 of this month’s issue. Low pay and lousy working conditions are more widespread than many techs realize. It’s a national problem and the reasons, or rather excuses, have been heard before. Working with your hands has never been properly recognized on this side of the Atlantic, where academically-challenged kids have been habitually steered into “The Trades” because it’s assumed that you don’t need intelligence to service the CAN bus or diagnose a tricky ABS controller. We know differently, but the grip of this notion of auto service is incredibly solid, even if it hasn’t been true for a generation. And young people today aren’t stupid; they won’t entertain a career that promises low pay, lousy working conditions and low social status. I don’t blame them. The traditional stream of apprentices, the sons (and some daughters) of current technicians, is drying up too. Why? Most techs will declare that they didn’t work hard all their lives so that their kids would have to work under the hood. That sentiment alone speaks volumes. I don’t blame the parents, either. Who I do blame are the parties responsible for this sad state, and they are many. A good place to start is the government, or rather governments, both provincial and federal who offer nothing in the way of tax breaks for journeymen, make it prohibitively complex to start our own businesses, then educate our young people to be part of the “knowledge economy”, as if our industry isn’t. And taxes? Don’t get me started. Then there’s the consumer, who’s been brainwashed by years of goods deflation in consumer electronics and by the media into believing that techs and the shops they work in, are ripping them off. The scary thing is, it’s not just happening in our industry, but across Canada as a whole. Quality jobs are disappearing everywhere as we globalize, and the replacement “McJobs” are a prescription for poverty. Real incomes for the majority of us have been falling for years, and no one seems concerned. Pharmacare? How about a minister’s conference about putting more money in worker’s pockets. There’s no reason why a 1200 square foot single family home, a car in the driveway, two or three weeks paid vacation a year and a humane retirement plan aren’t the basic minimum that should be guaranteed to hard workers in a knowledge-based industry like ours. We’re generating the wealth, but in the end too little of it is working its way back thorough the system. And when ordinary Canadians stop consuming, what then? There’s no excuse for a resource rich nation like ours to not have a substantially higher standard of living for ordinary citizens. Remember this at the ballot box, municipal, provincial or federal. And keep writing, to SSGM and to your local politicians. They can do more than they admit, but they won’t unless we start something first.