Labor Rate Advisory Board Weighs in on Surveys and Next Steps

by Alana Quartuccio

Labor rate talks continued over the summer as much work still needs to be done. 

In late July, the Auto Body Labor Rate Advisory Board (ABLRAB) weighed in on the data collected from the labor rate survey sent to registered body shops in June and reviewed the intel needed via an insurer survey in their research to determine what a fair and reasonable labor rate should look like in Massachusetts.

Co-chair Stacy Gotham (actuary of the Insurance and Financial Services Division) launched a lengthy discussion about the validation of the shops who were surveyed by indicating concern that the 525 respondents out of the 1,019 body shops surveyed “aren’t somehow biasing the data” and should “represent the general [body shop] population.” 

When she suggested taking a closer look at the shops that responded, Brian Bernard (Total Care Accident Repair; Raynham) expressed, “If we have 500-plus responses from the survey, I’m trying to understand the science behind doing a sampling of those shops. In my mind, if 500 people show up and vote at the polls, every one of those 500 votes gets counted.” Gotham stated the sampling would be for “verification purposes” and they would perhaps “obtain some additional characteristics” to “check for potential bias in the data.” 

Rick Starbard (Rick’s Auto Collision; Revere) recalled the Board agreeing previously to do an audit of some of the shops for further information as needed. As for what was collected, he believes, “Unless we go door knocking to force these people to fill it out, having what could be half of the industry participating in this survey, I think we did pretty good.” Starbard said it appeared that the shops that took the survey represented shops of all “different shapes and sizes, from program shops to independent shops and dealerships. I’ve been involved for close to 40 years, and I know a lot of names on this list, and I’ll say we run the gamut on this survey.”

Size of shop, location and type of business were mentioned as characteristics to explore. In regard to mining for further data, Matthew Ciaschini (Full Tilt Auto Body; West Hatfield) indicated, “I would just speak to the type of shop, if that’s a consideration, that we ask for percentage of insurance work. Because after all, this is about the suppression of a rate set by insurers. So, we’re trying to get to the end of that by figuring out what it should be, not what it is being suppressed to. Let’s try to get to that number with any shop that performs any level of insurance work.”

Following discussion about rates varying in different regions of the state, Bernard pointed out that the Board should really consider that body shops “have these forced rates upon us that are protected by the policy and some of the regulations. But we’re really not looking at fair competition for the auto body industry. I’m afraid that point is getting missed, and it’s a big miss if we don’t focus on it. Competition was welcomed by the insurers with their insurance reform and creating that competition, but why is it not appropriate to have competition for auto body shops? Why are we all forced to take the same rate from a particular insurer? And how do we dismantle that such that it becomes more competitive and people can now perform services based on how good they are?” Gotham responded, “We will consider that in the final report.” 

Discussion moved on to a survey that will be sent to insurance companies seeking to collect the same rate information that was presented to registered body shops. While weighing considerations, the conversation returned to the idea of digging up more data about body shops which led Starbard to question why this additional information was now important. He pointed out that his business started small and later grew, but not every business has the same ability.

Gotham expressed, “We’re just trying to evaluate if there are differences between the population that responded and the population that did not respond. [Size of business] is just an example of a characteristic. Maybe the data will show it has a relationship. If you look at the average cost of the small versus large and the standard deviation, it’s going to tell us whether it’s meaningfully different, but I don’t know that it is.”

 Bernard chimed in. “We won’t know how much of a difference that makes, and we may never know because the insurance industry doesn’t care about the differences. They don’t pay anybody based on their differences. They pay everybody the exact same way with a forced rate that they’ve identified, that they think is a one-size-fits-all. They haven’t been interested in understanding if a shop has certifications or whether a shop has paid for training or if they have the appropriate equipment to fix modern cars. They don’t pay a different rate for that. Again, that becomes part of our frustration and why we’re in the mess that we’re in.”

Ciaschini piggybacked to add that a forced rate by insurers to pay all shops the same means “the only way for a business to increase would be by scale. So, there really isn’t a reason to survey based on shop size because every shop would naturally be forced to grow [their volume] because everyone is being paid at one forced rate.” 

At the end of the meeting, the Board agreed on the initial insurance survey questions presented while a subcommittee will consider querying insurers about the total number of claims to referral and non-referall shops. 

The ABLRAB will reconvene on Monday, September 15 to hear testimony from insurance and industry experts.

Want more? Check out the September 2025 issue of New England Automotive Report!