American small business owners are great! … except for the thousands who are not | american small business
Oe all know that our small business owners are the backbone of the American economy. We are about 30 million and we provide more than half of the jobs in the country. Everyone seems to like us. Politicians court us. The big brands take their hats off to us. Each year we celebrate our small business community with Small Business Week, Small Business Saturday, National Entrepreneurship Month and many other days honoring self-employed and company-owned business owners. minorities.
Yippee for us! But you know what? While I am an advocate and voice for my small business colleagues, even I have to admit that not all small business owners deserve such praise. Some, in fact, are not worthy at all.
There are restaurant owners – like these in California, Michigan and Oregon to name a few – who blatantly and recklessly defied local Covid regulations and made their customers run and employed the risk of dying of something other than the E-coli in their food. Or the dentist in Wisconsin who knocked out his patients’ teeth in order to submit false insurance claims (wow!).
And let’s not forget the seemingly countless number of small business owners – like the operators of a tech company and a baking company in Massachusetts, the genius who ran a real estate company in Pennsylvania, the serial fraudster of the Delaware and the twin brothers who oversaw several companies in California – all of whom defrauded the federal government by submitting bogus applications for Covid relief funds because, hey, why should that money go to people who really needed it , is not it ?
Or how about the manufacturer in Georgia who was ordered to pay $250,000 after firing a disabled employee? Who do this ? Or the regional water utility company in Minnesota that was told to pay $45,000 to an employee wrongfully fired because of her skin color? Who does that too?
It turns out that a lot of business owners do. And other bad things too.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the counts kept by the government. For example, less than a month ago, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released detailed breakdowns of more than 67,448 workplace discrimination charges the agency has received over the past his last exercise. The agency said it secured $439.2 million for victims of discrimination in the private sector and state and local workplaces through voluntary resolutions and litigation. The Department of Labor recently reported thousands of cases from 2021 where companies in industries ranging from auto repair to landscaping services underpaid or abused employees.
And it’s not just employees who get scammed. For example, there are independent entrepreneurs who make their money by being influencers on social media, but then trick unwitting people into giving them free stuff in exchange for false promises of mention. Or fraudulent freelancers operating on well-known online platforms who take money in exchange for doing nothing at all. Or the independent contractors — like this one in Philadelphia — who allegedly took payments for jobs like remodeling bathrooms and rebuilding homes in exchange for… spoiler alert: not doing the job. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 2.8 million consumer fraud reports this year against companies ranging from deceptive credit repair services to those freaks who call my cell phone in the middle of the night.
So what have I learned from all this research? It’s that while it annoys me when people accuse small businesses of seeking profit rather than the welfare of their employees, or paying too little, or acting offensively or defrauding their customers, I have to admit that in some cases…these people may have an indication. It’s sad. But I can’t deny it.
Of course, the vast majority of small business owners are good people who run good businesses and care about their employees. But there are still more than a few who, frankly, aren’t. So now when someone accuses a business owner of doing something improper, my instinctive reaction is not to automatically dispute that person’s claim. Because maybe, just maybe, there is some truth to this story.