Automotive industry warn of skills crisis<\/a><\/p>\nLack of workers and apprentices, long waits for parts and an increasingly complex market are driving waiting times for car repairs through the roof.<\/p>\n
He said the base rate of pay in the industry could also turn young people away.<\/p>\n
“My message to them … is that is not what you will earn in the industry,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As you become productive and develop your skill set, you can earn really, really good money.”<\/p>\n
Some businesses turning overseas<\/p>\n
Some business owners have been willing to pay more than $20,000 to bring in skilled mechanics from overseas.<\/p>\n
The Philippines has proven particularly popular, due to widespread English-speaking skills.<\/p>\n
Mr Wilmington said he turned to recruiting overseas workers “out of desperation”.<\/p>\n
“I think we had no choice. We really were running out of options and we needed a mechanic.”<\/p>\n
Bonie Fernandez spent almost 20 years working as a mechanic in Saudi Arabia, sending money back to his family in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
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Bonie Fernandez works as a mechanic in Brisbane while his family live in the Philippines. (ABC News: Stephen Clarke)<\/p>\n
Mr Wilmington hired him last year through an online agency based in Western Australia.<\/p>\n
Mr Fernandez said the work was “much more enjoyable” than some of his previous jobs, including working in Saudi Arabia where he said there was a lot of “pressure”.<\/p>\n
He now hopes to become a permanent resident and bring his family to Australia to live with him.<\/p>\n
‘Hard to keep up’<\/p>\n
The lack of workers was affecting both customers and business owners, according to Mr Camm.<\/p>\n
“Customers can expect to have some delays to get their vehicles repaired,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And for businesses, they struggle with workloads.”<\/p>\n
The report showed 33 per cent of Queensland automotive businesses are turning away work due to being understaffed \u2014 compared to 27 per cent nationwide.<\/p>\n
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About one third of automotive repair stores say they’ve had to turn away work due to not having enough staff. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n
Mr Wilmington agreed it could be “really hard” to keep up with demand, particularly because his business had a large customer base.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to do the job so you get busier … you’ve [got to do that balancing act] where you don’t get yourself too snowed under but you meet everyone’s needs,” he explained.<\/p>\n
Mr Camm said a recent federal government decision to slash incentives to take on apprentices from $5,000 to $2,500 from January 1 next year was putting the industry’s future at risk.<\/p>\n
“I just can’t believe the government would walk away from an industry,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a very disappointing decision.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, the federal Minister for Skills and Training Andrew Giles said the government was “backing Australians to get the skills they want for the jobs we need”.<\/p>\n
“We’re ensuring incentives are geared towards the skills we most need, and complemented by measures to ensure apprentices have access to additional supports like study loans and living away from home allowance.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than half of Queensland’s automotive repair businesses say they are struggling to find skilled staff, with some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,73799,651,99,843,42173,3177,205096,94,701,17201,205095,13642,18028,1782],"class_list":["post-381178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-automotive-industry","tag-brisbane","tag-business","tag-cars","tag-foreign-workers","tag-mechanic","tag-overseas-workers","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-shortage","tag-skilled","tag-skills","tag-vehicles","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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