My question involves business law in the state of: Kentucky
We own a security company and we are contract labor because we could not afford to be anything other than contract labor, if we had to pay regular minimum wage with all the other fees involved we wouldn't be able to make it. Plus the men would only be able to work 40 hours a week.
Basically, a year and a half ago one guy brought his family to camp over the weekend on one of the job sites, and this was definitely not allowed, we almost lost the contract we had, but we had to let the guy go. He reported us to the State of Kentucky, and now they're saying we might not be able to do contract labor anymore with our guards. Right now we pay below minimum wage at $6.50 an hour but the guards usually get between 55-80 hours a week so they bring home good money. We don't charge the people much over that, so our profit is not much.
My question is, can the government force us to change to paying minimum wage and having to do W-2s and work mens comp etc or can we continue like we are doing paying $6.50 an hour and keep our men as contract laborers? This has really worried the whole family and men the last few weeks. We would just like to have this resolved.
We had a judge and accountant set up the company the way it is now to make it legal, and they're not even sure what is going on. Is there anywhere in the law that states that we're safe in what we're doing? thanks

