Many workers at Trump speech paid to be there

PITTSBURGH — Workers at a Royal Dutch Shell petrochemicals plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania, were forced to choose Tuesday between attending a speech by President Donald Trump or forgoing overtime pay that their co-workers would earn.

Attendance was optional, but contract workers who chose not to stand in the crowd would not qualify for time-and-a-half pay Friday, the Pittsburgh Post-gazette reported. Several companies with thousands of unionized workers have contracts with Shell.

Workers at the unfinished Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex had to arrive at 7 a.m., scan their ID cards and stand for hours until Trump’s speech began, the Postgazette reported.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for one of the contractors wrote to workers, according to the newspaper.

The contractor’s memo also banned “anything viewed as resistance” at Trump’s speech, the Post-gazette reported.

The Washington Post on Saturday was unable to reach Shell or the plant’s unions for comment.

Trump’s speech on Tuesday felt at times like a campaign rally, The Washington Post reported. Between remarks about U.S. energy production, Trump urged the workers to support his re-election and complained about his perceived enemies: the media, the Democrats running for president and the Academy Awards.

About 5,000 workers attended the speech, according to Newsweek.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Newsweek that workers who chose to skip the rally received “paid time off,” which does not count as hours worked and does not trigger overtime pay.

Trump’s speech was treated as a training session, Smith said in a statement. “We do these several times a year with various speakers. The morning session (7-10 a.m.) included safety training and other work-related activities.”

Ken Broadbent, business manager for the union Steamfitters Local 449, told the Post-gazette that his workers respect Trump for his title, regardless of whether they like him. Anyone who did not want to go to Trump’s speech could skip it, he said.

“This is just what Shell wanted to do and we went along with it,” Broadbent told the newspaper.