Someone once told me that leading a collision industry association is a little like “herding cats” - can you imagine how difficult that would be?

Get Up, Stand Up
Our provincial Executive Director recently got a letter from a shop in the rural area of our province after he castigated everyone that did not show up at our semi-annual conference.

The shop owner explained that he is literally the office manager, body tech, paint tech, detailer and bookkeeper all in one. His attempts to get help to move to rural Saskatchewan have been futile. He went on to explain that he would like to come to our meeting, but when he does get a weekend off, he likes to spend it with his young family. He trusts that those of us in charge will make the right decisions for our industry.

My heart goes out to this guy yet I can’t help but think that maybe he should be working for somebody else rather than be a slave to his business.

In reality I think his plight is now shared by many shop owners of larger facilities. We no longer control our own businesses. The insurance man tells us how much we can charge, whose parts we will buy and demand production quotas from us just for the privilege of doing business with them. The crazy part is that we do it!

I subscribe to a trade magazine out of the States  and I enjoy the feistiness of the American shop owners. In the latest issue there is an article entitled “Chalk One Up for the Little Guy” by Rick Little. It is a great story of how he took Progressive Insurance to court to get $237.51 plus 6% interest and court costs. The charge he laid was that    the company manually manipulated the prescribed refinish times of the repair manual software and reduced the overall base refinish time on a 10.8 hour job by 3.5 hours.

Rick outlined his case by bringing  in a cardboard cutout of a hood panel and explained to the judge all the necessary steps required to properly prepare and paint this panel. He even used an old paint gun and created his own sound effects as he slowly and deliberately “swished” paint on the panel.

Essentially he gave the judge a lesson on how to paint a vehicle. Several days after the trial, the judge rendered a five-page decision in Rick’s favor. Progressive Insurance sent him a cheque for the full amount plus court costs and interest!

Don’t Give Up the Fight
I know that a lot of you are thinking “Oh yeah, Rick may have won that battle but he’s going to lose the war!” You may be right but I don’t think someone like Rick will roll over and take it.

He has gotten up off his knees and made his case that he wants to be treated fairly and get paid for what he does. How can anyone find fault in that? Maybe if more of us stood up and made a stand, our industry would not be in the mess that it is.

I know it is difficult for many to be on the front lines of the fight to protect our livelihood. But if you cannot be there at least supply bullets! The dues your local, provincial and national organizations receive help to pay wages for people to research and explain our position to our industry partners.

As long as we all just hunker down and suffer in silence, don’t get engaged in the process and generally ignore any opportunity to communicate your situation, we will continue to get dictated to by the insurance companies.
 
Stand up! Get engaged! Participate! If you cannot be there, write a letter. If you can’t give time, then give your money! Become part of the solution, not part of the problem.