Friends and Family Plan

by Rolland
(Middletown, Ohio)

I've worked at a company for 20 yrs now and we have an assistant plant manager who also has a lawn care service and snow removal business.
This guy brings in his people that work for him and has them work as temporaries during the off season and if they are working during the winter time and they get snow he lets them leave to help him and doesn't point them for doing this if we take off work. We get pointed for it and it is held against on our raises yet these people are allowed to leave so they can help them. So basically they have the run of the plant getting away with a lot of things that we couldn't do. He is taking care of them for who they are.

There are also people full time that help him on there days off making money under the table and I mean thousands of dollars a year and he doesn't claim them and they don't claim the money so they are taken care of as well. This is fraud with the i.r.s.

We also have friends that are hired in that are allowed to talk and walk around even though they only been there a short time a guy like me that doesn't kiss butt but works and has been there 20 yrs is looked at when I so much as talk for 5 minutes.

When confronting our plant manager on this what he says is we need to worry about ourself and not worry about what others are doing. Of course these people that are talking like this are his buddies too, people he associates with out of the plant.

Response from Carl: Thanks Rolland. To a certain extent, all you can do is worry about yourself. I'd be careful of accusing others of evading taxes, etc without proof especially as it doesn't relate to your job specifically and further you don't seem to have any actual proof other than what people are saying.

I don't know what to say in terms of offering advice. I'm surprised that the plant manager doesn't seem to be worried about this when from what you mention it's the assistant plant manager who is bringing his personal business into the company. Based on the fact that you've been with the company so long it's hard to say what you should do since you obviously have a lot to lose should you decide to either look for a new job or take things further.

You don't mention who sits above the plant manager and who he reports to so I don't what else to comment on since it's hard to figure out why someone is apparently allowed to bring his personal business into the company to the detriment of others like yourself.

Carl