Body and Paint Shop Layoffs

[detmaintainer]

Any areas of the country hearing any rumors about layoffs in early December for body and paint guys. They did this years ago during peak on a temporary basis but our contract language has changed. If this happens the layed off personell can go anywhere there seniority will take them. They will likely be permanently displacing full time porters as they are the easiest and most coveted jobs here. $36 an hour and biggest concern is running out of toilet paper. They also are easy to qualify for. We are an IAM local not Teamster .Let me know if you are hearing anything in other areas of the country.

 

[KOG72]

A lot of new trucks at my building really no use for paint and body here.

 

[Staydryitsraining]

There is buildings with a paint and body shop that has union hourlies? Wth is that at?

 

[detmaintainer]

Metro Detroit and Toledo Ohio area I know of. my guess is there are others in large metro areas. The guys at our shop put out a lot of work and do it quickly compared to a collision shop. They do alot of collision damage and re-paints on older vehicles

 

[rod]

Our paint and body guy was known as "the center mechanic" and his tools consisted of a paint brush and a quart of brown paint.

 

[detmaintainer]

The paint and body shop is at one center and takes care of paint and collision damage for probably a 4 to 5 county 2,000 to 3,000 square mile area. There are 4 body repair guys and one painter but all of them can paint and do body work.

 

[Yeet]

Metro Detroit and Toledo Ohio area I know of. my guess is there are others in large metro areas. The guys at our shop put out a lot of work and do it quickly compared to a collision shop. They do alot of collision damage and re-paints on older vehicles

Love Toledo. Those guys print out their seal controls so I don’t have to interpret other people’s chicken scratch.

 

[Rick Ross]

We have a bunch of tractors with black fenders, mirrors and side panels. I guess our area is too cheap to actually match colors on anything our shop fixes.

 

[Non sequitur]

Here is UPS shop employee's training video. 100% pass rate

 

[Redtag]

Here our body guys are IAM and they can only displace lower seniority IAM employees in the same job designation. A porter would be a teamster and sonority doesn’t even carry across designation let alone a different union. Plus, those porter guys are all super senior, any IAM body tech with 30 years is eligible to retire... you would need at least 30 for a porter job even if you could bid a teamster job.

We do have language that allows for the body shop to schedule vacations during peak to avoid layoffs

 

[Mugarolla]

We have a bunch of tractors with black fenders, mirrors and side panels. I guess our area is too cheap to actually match colors on anything our shop fixes.

Our shop actually uses a rattle can to paint replacement mirrors, bumpers and fenders that come from the factory black.

 

[scratch]

Our paint and body guy needs some training.

 

[bumped]

Any areas of the country hearing any rumors about layoffs in early December for body and paint guys. They did this years ago during peak on a temporary basis but our contract language has changed. If this happens the layed off personell can go anywhere there seniority will take them. They will likely be permanently displacing full time porters as they are the easiest and most coveted jobs here. $36 an hour and biggest concern is running out of toilet paper. They also are easy to qualify for. We are an IAM local not Teamster .Let me know if you are hearing anything in other areas of the country.

How old are your paint and body guys? Pretty much all rookie porters I've seen have at least 27 years full time. Porter was for those to get out of package.

 

[detmaintainer]

How old are your paint and body guys? Pretty much all rookie porters I've seen have at least 27 years full time. Porter was for those to get out of package.

 

[detmaintainer]

The body guys have 20. 26, 27, 39 and 31 years. Our porters are IAM with most having 15 to 20 years, part time seniority before they have an opportunity to go full time. The lowest porter has 19 total years and there are 5 or 6 with low enough seniority to get bumped by the body guys. There are 16 guaranteed full-time porter jobs in our local.
They call them "The Sweet Sixteen"
One made over $120,000 last year.

 

[rod]

So do the Official body guys do good work? Here all of our paint jobs went to a low regular bid body shop with the instructions to only do a minor sanding---spray on the paint---and slap on new decals. Some of the paint job were HORRIBLE with a CAPITOL H.

 

[burrheadd]

So do the Official body guys do good work? Here all of our paint jobs went to a low regular bid body shop with the instructions to only do a minor sanding---spray on the paint---and slap on new decals. Some of the paint job were HORRIBLE with a CAPITOL H.

we’d get them back from the same type body shop and the paint would still be tacky

 

[PASinterference]

We have a bunch of tractors with black fenders, mirrors and side panels. I guess our area is too cheap to actually match colors on anything our shop fixes.

Black...Pullman brown, what's the difference?

 

[rod]

we’d get them back from the same type body shop and the paint would still be tacky

I once was told to drive one that had just been painted that afternoon over to Fargo (165 miles) at night ---during the height of Minnesota bug season. The whole front of it had embedded June bugs stuck in the paint. The center manager where I was delivering it to started to go ballistic on me until I told him he was barking up the wrong tree---I was just working as directed.

 

[Indecisi0n]

Hmmmmm