ASHRAE Journal - March 2022 - 82

REFRIGERATION APPLICATIONS
COLUMN
Andy Pearson
A Fistful of Dollars
BY ANDY PEARSON, PH.D., C.ENG., FELLOW ASHRAE
In the series of columns exploring the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals, I wrote
about the labor shortage facing the HVAC&R industry and how this is set to get much
worse over the next ten years ( " Quality and Equality, " ASHRAE Journal, December 2021).
This prompted a correspondent to email me with an observation that reminded me of
that great Paul Simon lyric: " 'The problem is all inside your head,' she said to me. 'The
answer is easy if you take it logically. I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free.' "
The solution, I was told, was simply to pay higher
wages and attract more people into the jobs market. On
the face of it, this is obviously correct, but as you dig into
it there are three signifi cant problems.
First comes the need to extract a suffi ciently high
hourly rate from the client to be able to afford to pay
higher wages to staff. This is diffi cult when
the true worth of a job well done is not
appreciated. The client's top priority is just
to make stuff cold and keep it that way.
Plenty of people are capable of this, but
that's without addressing the second and
third priorities, which tend to add cost to
the job: keeping the system effi cient and
keeping it safe. In fact, I'd place these priorities
in reverse order: safe; effi cient; reliable.
Too few clients see it this way.
Second, there are plenty of alternative
vendors willing to offer short-term reliability
at a very low hourly rate to their client. This
makes it diffi cult to break the mold by offering a service
that properly addresses priorities one and two as well as
three. Of course, everyone pays lip service to safety and
effi ciency; however, many clients are not suffi ciently
tech savvy to realize that they are often being shortchanged
on these two vital topics.
Finally, there are plenty of parallel career paths for
technicians where employers are willing and able to pay
wages that match or even exceed the levels achieved
in HVAC&R because the reliability of the system they
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Clint felt undervalued but didn't
know what to do about it.
service is seen as more important, but it doesn't carry
the same safety or effi ciency challenges. Making comparisons
between different labor markets is always diffi
cult. Working in HVAC&R is complicated and requires
specialized knowledge and skills. This ought to make it
a desirable path to higher salary potential, but instead it
creates a vocational niche where staff seem to
be expected to do it for the love of the job, not
the money. In this sense it is a bit like nursing,
teaching, health care and even professional
music (at least for the majority of orchestral
players and session musicians). It is fascinating
to see how the COVID-19 pandemic has
changed the way we view and value these vocational
professionals, but this has not translated
so far into a raise in wages for them.
In HVAC&R we are stuck in a cleft. We can't
raise salaries to attract the brightest and best
because we will be undercut by a low-rate, lowskill
competitor. We can't raise skill levels because that
will be a barrier to entry, and we already have a labor
shortage. We can't raise client expectations because we
don't have suffi cient skilled staff to serve them. We need
a new business model, perhaps one where the service
provider participates in the benefi ts of the system being
safe and effi cient as opposed to the current model that,
it could be argued, rewards the service provider with
more work if the system is unreliable. Any suggestions?
Andy Pearson, Ph.D., C.Eng., is group managing director at Star Refrigeration in
Glasgow, UK.

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ASHRAE Journal - March 2022

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