I've owned my own business for about 5 years now and always treat employees right. I work in the trades so I pay employees based on an incentive based system.

We need to to X today and I have estimated X to take 10 hours, if you finish in 6 hours you can go home and get paid for 10.

The only thing I care about is meeting the schedule. I have had employees working 3.5 days/week and getting paid for 5. I don't care, I just want the schedule to work. When employees make more $$ money everyone wins.

When business owners clearly milk employees for money it pisses me off. As an owner you have to put employees first.