Random, I already told you how he cheats from his employees. By paying them for less time than they are working. Look at it this way. My husband made $45K last year. If he had been paid for all the OT he worked he would have easily made $65K. That's $20K that his boss stold from him. Multiply that times 20 or so employees. That's a lot of money. That's what finances the guys luxuries.
We have copies of time cards that were altered when my husband has tried to get paid for his OT. He's literally been told "take it or leave it." So have the other guys in this particular shop and other shops my husband has worked for. What's really really bad is that the contractor bills the general for all the OT the guys worked and gets paid for it. Then he turns around and cheats the guys out of it and pockets the money himself.
In addition to that, my husband spends a lot of his own money doing things for the company like filling equipment with gasoline, taking equipment back and forth to job sites, paying for a cell phone so that whenever the boss pages him he wont have to go looking for a pay phone, etc. How much does this all add up to in one year? I haven't figured it out but it's a lot.
This isn't only one contractor who does this in this field either. The trades are a racket and every contractor is like that. You believe they have a right to get rich by exploiting people. I don't. I'm not envious of what they have. I'm angry about what they are taking from my husband and the other journeymen who work hard and deserve to be paid fairly.
My husband is a union worker. That means you cannot call the labor board because you have to exhaust all union avenues first. The union is a racket and is only there to protect the contractors. If you file a grievance, the contractor says, "work is slow" and you find yourself out of work. If you go to another contractor who is chumsy with the union officials that contractor will know you filed a grievance against a previous contractor. There are journeymen who have found themselves literally black-balled. And to go non union you lose your pension, benefits and about $10 per hour from your pay. That's how they get you by the balls.
You think things are so easy and up front. They aren't. And giving these contractors tax benefits will not benefit anyone but them. It will not trickle down to the employees. When my husband finally breaks away and becomes the contractor, gets some really good jobs and makes some really good money, I can't imagine he would treat his guys in that way. We'll be a lot better off than we are now and our standard of living will surely go up. But not because we steal from the employees. It will be because of his own hard earned money. That's something these guys don't understand. And apparently neither do you.