We are the Subcontractor in a contract with General Contractor for the framing of a hotel. We filed a timely invoice at end of April for payment on 35 % of total job completion. We were told that Owner approved the payment. We have been waiting for the Contractor to get paid so we could get paid. (Pay when Paid) Should have been around 30 days per contract. In May we lost a lot of manpower and thus productivity. General contractor lied to us and said they still had not been paid by Owner and that we needed to improve our manpower. We actively pursued remedy and procured additional crew to start this coming week. GC says they want to see us improve in quality and manpower. GC now thinks we should not receive the 35% payment for work already performed even though it had been approved. Moreover, I just found out in late afternoon that GC has been dishonest as they actually did get paid by Owner earlier this week. GC was even trying to get Subcontractor to change their submitted invoice on the percentage of work completed while they secretly withheld that they received payment from Owner. When I directly asked president of GC this afternoon if they had received payment from Owner, he completely denied it and stated that they need to see improvement from Subcontractor prior to payment. What would be my best next step to secure payment from a GC who is intentionally delaying payment on work that has already been completed ? Not to mention subcontractor needs the funds to secure lodging for the increased manpower that GC required the Subcontractor to remedy.