It says nothing about this as an option for payment only the percentage we agreed to above cost

So if the contractor is acting like an employee he should not be charging wages??? you cant be the contractor and the employee?

The builder is now charging us wages per hour spent on the build

Are you saying that a single person, your builder, is charging you for their time spent on your build?

Can you show us the actual lineitem for the charge? The word ‘wages’ is weird. You should pay for all the construction labor whether they do it in house with employees or if it’s billed through a sub. I wouldn’t use the word ‘wages’ for that though. Mine (also cost plus) has a management charge also, which was a lineitem on the estimate and so is expected.

Depends on your contract. For ours our project manager has a fees of the plus portion. And we also go charged hourly for GC time etc. We never got charged for Project Manager time

Yes PPF. it is one person being the GC and being the labor expecting wages .

Your contract should specify a billing rate for the contractor and/or contractor's employees performing work on site. The "contractor's fee" should cover all general and administrative activities, e.g., purchasing, accounting, scheduling, general project coordination, on-site client meetings, progress reporting to the client, etc. If the contractor is performing hands-on work that would otherwise be performed by a trade contractor, I believe it's legitimate for him to charge you for that time.

Appreciate your comments. Thanks