Despite Nashville’s billion dollar development boom, thousands of people responsible for Nashville’s growth are locked out of its benefits by greedy employers, subcontracting schemes by large corporations, and mis-classification of employees as “subcontractors.” This has fostered a culture of rampant wage theft, especially in the construction and hospitality industries.

Since 2010, Workers’ Dignity has served as a space where workers can band together to recover stolen wages and demand that companies take responsibility for everyone under their roofs and on their work sites. Our wage theft process is driven by public action - workers supporting workers to lead their own fight for dignity and pay. The process begins with Defend Your Rights workshops, taught by member leaders who have already led their own campaigns to recover wages. From there, workers are paired up with advocate teams involving members and ally volunteers who accompany them throughout the process of their campaign. Through this experience, every person who sees their wage theft campaign through to the end learns the basics of building worker power: best practices for recruiting co-workers, power mapping, research, creating a campaign escalation plan and timeline, and creating enough public pressure to win. For a deeper dive into the wage theft process, click here.

Every Thursday at 7:00pm our worker center is filled with workers collaborating in solidarity to restore their most basic workplace right - being paid for their labor - and to gain back each person’s dignity, win or lose.