quote:

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.

quote:

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.”

Mr. Trump received a generally warm and at times cheerful welcome at Shell, where he praised natural gas extraction in Appalachia and talked about his political grievances and name-called some opponents....

The president also called out union leadership, which Shell had requested to be in attendance.

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

More story here:

https://www.post-gazette.com/b...stories/201908160113

True to form of every dictator in history.

I know nausea is a trivial response for such demagoguery (and with such severe financial and physical inconvenience attached for the workers) but it's all I can, um, come up with.

One more thorny proof of the death American democracy is dying.

“Your attendance is not mandatory”. Right.

And names will be taken too. (If this were China facial recognition software would be deployed and saved. Say, isn't that the kind of thing "don't be evil" Google is signed up to help with?)

The employer is willing to pay, the Union is willing to play, the workers are willing to take the money. All willing participants.

Neither pure nor pretty, but also not wrong.

quote:

the workers are willing to take the money. All willing participants.

Wait, did I miss something? The workers are not (all) willing. Their presence was coerced. Being required to show up or else not be paid is not willing participation.

The upside of this whole episode is that there are probably a number of people who might have voted GOP or sat home who will now actively vote against the Orange one. For many people, something personal has to happen in order to translate abstract stuff, like overt racist speech, into a motive for action.

quote:

something personal has to happen

I think this is so true. Unfortunately, with our current administration, lots of things are indeed happening on a personal level for more and more people.... Hopefully they remember when it's time to cast the ballots...

Well, that's not exactly how it worked. The union and Shell didn't say "if you don't show up, you won't get paid." What they did say was, "if you don't want to go, you have to take a paid vacation day." In addition, because their contract has ~16 hours of overtime built in to their regular work week, they would forfeit the overtime pay they would normally have earned had they worked that day.

BUT most employees I know have their vacation days calculated down to the day. Being suddenly told that you have to essentially give one of those vacation days back (because you never planned to use it to watch Trump) isn't trivial. It's probably more important than losing the OT pay (which would be around 2 hours, I'm guessing). So not great, but not quite as reported.

Giving up one of your vacation days, your overtime, AND being told how to behave is still bad enough.