Shell Workers Had to Attend Trump Speech to Get Paid

By David Boddiger | August 17, 2019 | 6:49pm

White House

When Donald Trump stood before a crowd of workers earlier
this week at a Royal Dutch Shell petrochemical plant in western Pennsylvania, and
rambled on about how
much he likes large trucks, the workers weren’t necessarily Trump fans. They had to be there to get paid.

The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette reported that while attendance was not mandatory, rules distributed
to workers days ahead of Trump’s Tuesday visit made clear that those
who didn’t attend wouldn’t be paid.

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To receive full pay, workers had to show up at 7 a.m., scan
their IDs, and stand for hours without lunch. “NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a sheet of
rules distributed ahead of the speech stated. They also had to abide by other
rules including no “yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as
resistance…”

How very dictatorial.

Per the Gazette:

That company and scores of other contractors on site and
their labor employees all have their own contracts with Shell. Several said the
contracts stipulate that to get paid, workers must be onsite.

Those who decided not to come to the site for the event
would have an excused but non-paid absence, the company said, and would not
qualify for overtime pay on Friday.

A Shell spokesman told the newspaper that the situation was
treated like a “paid training day” for those who attended.

During Trump’s speech, the president urged workers to vote
out union leaders who don’t support him.

“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I
hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK?” Trump said. “And if they don’t, vote
them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”

Trump also tried to take credit for the manufacturing
complex, which is located northwest of Pittsburgh. According to the Associated
Press, Trump needs to look good in the Rust Belt to get reelected in 2020. But
there’s one problem: Shell had announced its plans to build the $6 billion
facility in 2012—when Barack
Obama was president.

“This would have never happened
without me and us,” Trump boasted, clearly lying.

The speech and tour were supposed to be part of an official
White House event, but of course Trump had turned it into a campaign rally.

And as the AP noted, the project currently employs about
5,000 workers. But once it’s fully operational, the number of permanent employees
will drop to about 600. And Donald Trump will have long since forgotten about
them.