The late-summer sun is setting across the parking lot at a church in South Nashville. Inside, organizers from labor advocacy group Workers’ Dignity lead a weekly meetup for workers and volunteers. While a few dozen attendees move around the room, talking and making posters, six men sit around a table near the front of the room.
The crew’s younger members, Jose Ortiz and Salvador Izaguirre, are quieter, nodding in agreement as Angel, 45, shares details and stories about their job site in Germantown. They were hired together in the fall by Scott Hurwitz via Elevated Concrete, a subcontractor, to work on 1231 Second Ave. N. — a 210-unit apartment building announced last year.
We communicate through Julio Quispe, a Workers’ Dignity staff member. Wearing a pink Lionel Messi jersey and flatbill hat, Jose Reyes, 19, speaks only to confirm his stake — about $900 — for work he did at the site in the fall. The group proudly identifies with the colloquial term chapines, a moniker for any Guatemalan but particularly those among its many Indigenous peoples.
They were the entire crew, raising the complex from the basement up for six months. Hurwitz covered their paychecks each week. Facebook posts from October and November show a smiling Hurwitz at the job site with workers in safety vests pouring concrete. Then he disappeared.
“The first week we didn’t get paid, we thought it was over,” Angel tells the Scene through a translator. “Then the second week, they said we would get $300 extra for waiting.”
The table — six of 37 workers missing compensation — estimates more than $50,000 is owed to the crew for three weeks of work in January and February. Angel says he last saw Hurwitz around Christmas 2022.
“Then the work got heavier,” Angel remembers, eliciting nods from the group. “Scott owed the crane company, so they came and took the crane away. We had to carry our materials up.”
Stories about Hurwitz got back to the workers while they waited. That he had a house for sale — once he sold it, they’d get paid. That he had fled to Miami for other work. He stopped answering his phone. The Scene tried two numbers for Hurwitz — one was disconnected, the other went to voicemail, which was full.
For many of the men and women at the Workers’ Dignity meeting, the workday ended a couple hours ago. Kids roam around the room, staying occupied on phones and iPads and refilling on orange soda and Sprite. A cooler in the corner is filled with individually wrapped baleadas, the Honduran tortilla staple filled with beans, cheese, eggs and avocado. At the front of the room, a few organizers pass out markers and discuss strategy on a white board. Armando Arzate, a Workers’ Dignity board member, checks in on a few groups. Arzate is still fighting to fully recover wages from work done at Vanderbilt.
The rest of the room is prepping for an upcoming action at Century Farms in Antioch. When TriStar Health built an emergency room off I-24 a few years ago, the family that installed its HVAC system didn’t get paid, they say. That family is here tonight, putting messages on poster boards alongside a couple dozen other volunteers and workers. They’re waiting for a meeting with District 32 Councilmember Joy Styles, who represents the area. One poster reads, “Wage Theft Is Slavery,” in thick green marker.
“Typically a worker will get a text about when and where to show up for a job,” says Johnny Epstein, a Workers’ Dignity volunteer and law student at Belmont who has worked as a construction engineer and consultant for more than a decade. “They get picked up in the morning, go to a job site and work, and hope they get paid. An employer will say, ‘You missed a spot in the corner,’ and dock them half their wages. Or they’ll say, ‘You have to pay for transportation or materials,’ after the fact. Theoretically, contract law could protect them. But it costs money to go to court.”
Nashville construction sites turn prime real estate — like the chapines’ lot in Germantown — into hundred-unit apartment buildings with rooftop bars and swimming pools. Philadelphia-based Greenpointe Construction bought 1231 Second Ave. N. for $5.5 million in 2020, a per-square-foot sale record at the time. Greenpointe’s principal, Gagan Lakhmna, has developed high-dollar property across the country — he has also been dogged with protests and lawsuits over illegal evictions and construction issues, particularly in Philly. Greenpointe’s $42.5 million construction loan, reported by Scene sister publication the Nashville Post last year, is parceled out among contractors, subcontractors, lawyers, architects and — in theory — workers until the project is done.
Below Lakhmna is contractor James Arias of Associated Construction, senior construction project manager for the site. Arias says he paid subcontractor Scott Hurwitz of Elevated Concrete for the chapines’ wages.
“It wasn’t just the laborers who didn’t get paid,” Arias tells the Scene. “At a certain point, he stopped paying everyone — rebar, concrete, the crane, 15 vendors.”
When the chapines walked off the job in early February after three weeks of missed pay, Arias hired them back directly. That’s around when he last spoke with Hurwitz, Arias says. He says Hurwitz is somewhere in Florida, maybe Orlando.
“I can’t say too much more,” says Arias. “We’re hoping it gets worked out in court. We were shunned for a while because of Scott. We have several projects here, and we’re trying to maintain good relationships with the local community.” Depositions are coming up for a lawsuit Arias’ company filed against Hurwitz for more than a million dollars in unpaid invoices.
Many of the chapines have moved on to other construction sites across the city. One still works at 1231 Second Ave. N., where workers are close to finishing the third floor of seven. Others dropped off in April and June.
At the gathering, other workers hear familiar elements in their story. Workers’ Dignity has run wage theft campaigns for individuals and crews across Nashville, and the group gets more reports of construction malpractice each month. In 2017, Nashville was named the most dangerous city in the South for construction workers. The city’s aggressive growth comes with tight timelines and jobsite tragedies, like the death of 16-year-old Gustavo Ramirez in 2020.
“In some form, yes, we will get our money back,” says Angel, speaking for the chapines. “Together, yes.”
