Bribing workers to attend Trump's PA Cracker Speech
A story you most likely won't see in Wheeling's "newspapers"
The previous post looked at our local Ogden newspapers' largely-positive coverage of President Trump's recent presidential policy speech political rally in Pennsylvania. But perhaps support for the speech was not all that it appeared to be. Some good work by Anya Litvak at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has documented the choices available to union workers:
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
And later in the P-G article:
The contractor's talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:
“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”
What happened here reminds me of when local mine operator Bob Murray encouraged or forced (depending upon your perspective) his miners to attend a Romney-for-President rally in 2012.
Just a hunch but I wouldn't expect to see anything about this in tomorrow's Wheeling News-Register.