In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 11 Dec 2017 08:24:23 +1300, Frank S
wrote:

I was told that there is a manual auto repair shops look up to find the
number of shop hours they charge for a job.

Right.

To be fair, I'm told they all charge that many hours even if it doesn't
take that many hours.

That's what I've always heard. But why do you say "To be fair". Some
would say it's unfair.

For example if three jobs are done, and even if they associate with each
other, they just add up the shop hours and then charge by the $200/hour
that the local shops all seem to charge for their shop rate.

I hadn't heard that. That would be unfairer. Not sure how often in
practice differnt tasks require the same setup work. But if you had
two problems under the dash, they might well charge the price for each,
even though they only took the radio etc. out once.

Where can we car owners get that manual online?

It used to be called, at least informally, maybe formally, the Flat Rate
Manual.