Car shops seeking quick fix on skills

A critical skills shortage is ­plaguing the automotive industry, with car repair shops across the country struggling to fill workshops with qualified mechanics.

CMR Automotive owner Cameron Virtue, left, and his first-year apprentice Nassim Guellati at his Sydney workshop. Picture: Adam Yip

A critical skills shortage is ­plaguing the automotive industry, with car repair shops across the country struggling to fill workshops with qualified mechanics.

Some 31,000 skilled automotive professional positions are unfilled, according to figures provided to The Australian by the Motor Trades Association of Australia. By the end of 2022, that could climb to 41,000.

Richard Dudley, chief executive of the MTAA, said the shortage was primarily due to a “misconception” that the automotive industry was a ”dirty trade”.

“We’re being impacted by a strong social experience that ­people think they must go down the pathway of higher education via university degree,” Mr Dudley said.

“There’s been a high emphasis placed on university training instead of Vocational Education and Training, which needs to be rebalanced.”

About 17,500 of the vacant positions are light vehicle mechanics, 2711 are heavy vehicle mechanics and the are rest panel beaters and spray painters.

With an uptake of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles climb­ing dramatically, mechanics will require more complex technical training.

Under the emissions projection report released by the ­federal government in December, the use of electric vehicles is projected to increase from 1 per cent in 2020 to 26 per cent in 2030.

Mr Dudley said training programs for budding mechanics must be “overhauled” to create a national standard that focuses on specific training on new vehicles and keeps up with the “agile” ­nature of the market.

Cameron Virtue, director of Sydney-based CMR Automotive, has felt the impacts of the absence of workers first-hand.

Auto-shop owners across the country are in competition to snatch up technically skilled workers, but Mr Virtue said ­apprenticeships were “spitting out a conveyor belt of under-qualified people”.

He has been unable to fill a position at his inner-west workshop for more than two months, which forced him to call in two retired ex-employees to help out.

“We have got a job out at the moment, and only 10 people have applied for it.

“Of the 10, none has enough experience to get past the first ­interview,” he said.

The pandemic has also been unkind to the “dying” auto­motive repair industry, with ­international border restrictions hindering the industry’s ability to source talent from overseas.

“We have sponsored visas for four people internationally, but because of border closures, we can’t sponsor anyone else.

“I don’t know what we could do to get the borders open again, but it’s definitely taking a toll on the business and the industry as a whole,” Mr Virtue said.