It means they're being paid based on the SRT (Standard Repair Time) that the repair book states it should take a journeyman to complete the work. SRTs are determined by the manufacturer but repair facilities can challenge them, usually once a year.
As with everything, these times can be gamed and abused.
But fundamentally, not being in the business, but outside as a layman, I've always liked the idea of SRT.
Simply because if you're paid the SRT rate, then a novice technician, in theory, would take more time on the job, and thus get paid less. An experienced technician would take less time and thus get paid more. Ideally, the experienced tech gets paid more because they can do more work in the day than a novice tech, and, again ideally, it all works out in the end.
The dark side is the edge cases and abuses at all levels (factory, management, techs).
I know one anecdote about replacing the sparkplug on a 8 cylinder 700 series BMW. Apparently, half of the plug are really had to get to, so one tech was simply doing "half the job".
On the other hand, a friend of mine knew one task very well that others didn't like, so would try to get those jobs so he could knock them out quickly.
So, anyway, on paper it sounds like a good idea to fairly pay technicians, to try to limit fraud against the consumer, etc. but I don't know how well it all works out in the end in the real world.
