David CookThe tiniest of revolutions is unfolding among union workers on the Volkswagen factory floor, as a handful of workers has formed a democratic caucus - sort of like a mini-union - within the United Auto Workers Local 42.
They call themselves the Volkswagen Workers for Solidarity, or VWS, and their vision and rhetoric about labor and workers - "we are the power that drives it all" - seems bold, unapologetic and just.
Like a union should.
Today, elections are being held for leadership positions at Local 42, and VWS has three candidates - Jarret Mitchell, Colby Curry, Anthony Goforth - on the ballot, and they're pushing for reforms that UAW should have been pushing for all along.
"Equal pay for equal work," said Byron Spencer, a VWS founding member.
Spencer works on the factory floor assembling doors. He's 31, a dad, and has been at VW for nearly four years and a UAW organizer for most of them.
Spencer makes $21.25 an hour, plus health, dental and a chunk of vacation.
Down the factory line from him is another man. Call him Jones.
Jones does much of the same work as Spencer.
"He's one of the best workers on the line," Spencer said of Jones.
While Spencer makes $21.25 an hour, Jones makes $14.50.
"I'm labeled as a temp worker," Jones said, "but I'm working the same hours."
Jones is a temp, or contract, worker on the VW factory floor, employed not by VW but by the Maryland-based hiring firm Aerotek Inc. Want a job at VW? You've got to get hired by Aerotek first.
Of the 1,500 or so factory workers at VW, about 150 are Aerotek temps, VW officials said.
Since Aerotek began staffing two years ago, roughly 650 workers have been transitioned from temp to full-time VW employees.
"It's based on business needs," said Scott Wilson, VW spokesman. "When a space on our permanent work force opens, we fill it from the Aerotek candidate pool."
VWS claims this creates an unjust, two-tiered division of labor, as full-timers and temp workers labor alongside each other, but earn different salaries.
It also creates a labor purgatory; Jones was hired two years ago, but is still laboring as a temp worker.
"This is not a temporary position," said Lucas Hiler, strategic account executive at Aerotek. "It is a long-term, stable opportunity."
Aerotek wages start at $12.50 an hour, with raises every six months, he said, adding that the approximate time between working at Aerotek and transitioning to full time at VW is one year.
"It's very difficult to know what the business conditions will be or what that individual's performance may reflect to be," Hiler said.
Outsourcing to temp agencies reflects a national trend. There are 7,000 workers at Nissan's Smyrna plant; after talking with multiple sources there, the Washington Post reported that temp workers may be a majority.
Heavy emphasis on temp work devalues labor, as unfair temp wages are substituted for any meaningful middle class salary, blowing a cannonball hole in any rising tide theory of economic fairness.
"Tennessee went from having 51,867 temporary workers in 2009 to 80,990 in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics - while median wages have stayed flat," the Post reported.
Three percent of all our jobs are temp workers, the Post said, a rate that's one of the highest across the nation. The Volunteer State is becoming the Temp State.
(At Nissan's plant in Mississippi, local clergy organized a "Lead us not into Temp-nation" campaign, the Post said.)
Yes, VW's rate is promising, with only 10 percent of its work force as temp labor.
Yet why should any be?
Earlier this summer, VWS circulated a petition: all temp workers who have worked more than six months be reorganized as full-time workers and receive the same pay and benefits as their fellow workers.
"We got 259 signatures," Spencer said.
Yet that petition is still at his home. You'd think VWS would have rushed it to UAW leadership. Think again.
"They don't bring up these things that could alienate them with management," Spencer said.
That's why VWS was created: to push and prod UAW from within on core issues, like advocating for temp workers, reducing injury rates - carpal tunnel and repetitive stress - on the floor and the body-chaotic one-week, day-shift followed by one-week, night-shift schedule.
To court VW here, we offered them everything and the moon - approximately $850 million in tax incentives.
What should we expect in return?
Shouldn't we call for some equitable and high standard of wages? And shouldn't that work be dignified, promising and anything but temporary, with unions boldly calling for such?
"The way I understood it, it's supposed to be a really good-paying job that can last a career," said Spencer. "Isn't that what Bob Corker and the others sold to us?"
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.