At a meeting Monday evening, the steering committee of local workers’ center Workers' Dignity/Dignidad Obrera voted to fire director Cecilia Prado, prompting pushback from Prado and staff. Employees have physically occupied the organization’s Whitsett Road location to protest Prado’s termination.
Supporters of the steering committee allege that Prado has “exhibited a pattern of harassment and abusive behavior toward Workers’ Dignity members, fellow staff, and other community members in Nashville,” in a public letter circulated on Tuesday. Staff members want to retain Prado, expand board membership and increase diversity on the board to include older, younger, queer, trans and femme individuals. They repeatedly cite a disconnect between the board and the direction of the organization under Prado. The executive body that made the decision to fire Prado is alternatively referred to as a steering committee by supporters and a board by its critics.
Workers' Dignity was founded in 2010 to advocate for the rights of low-wage workers. It has organized campaigns against wage theft, dangerous working conditions and corporations’ influence on Nashville, conducting work in both English and Spanish.
Cecilia Prado and Workers’ Dignity hand out free tamales at a construction site
A petition by the staff states that the staff’s push to democratize leadership “has been met as a threat to the power of the founders, who haven’t done the work with working class people in years.” Currently, three individuals serve on the organization’s steering committee. All are construction workers.
“Sometimes there is conflict inside of a family,” Julio Fernández tells the Scene at a picnic table outside of the nonprofit’s Whitsett Road office. Fernández is on staff as Workers' Dignity’s construction organizer. “We are hoping to sit down with the people who made this decision to explain our disagreement and resolve things with a process of transformative justice.”
While Fernández spoke with the Scene, Prado and other striking employees and supporters held a meeting inside the building. Many fear additional retaliatory firings.
The striking staff was told to vacate the building by noon on Tuesday in an email by board member Armando Arzate, sent just after midnight. In 2019, Arzate campaigned against Brentwood-based contractor Orion Building Corporation to recover $43,000 that, he said, was owed to him and his cousin for cement work on McMurray Middle School. No eviction had occurred as of 12:45 p.m.
Update: After the publication of this story, the Scene received a statement from Workers’ Dignity that reads, in part: "As a committee we made the difficult decision to ask Cecilia Prado to resign due to ongoing issues that were brought up by staff in the past and present. This is the fourth conflict in which Cecilia has been a main participant. We are honestly tired as a committee.” See the statement in full — in both Spanish and English — by clicking through to the PDF below.
