Oil And Gas Giant Shell Told Workers To Show Up And Cheer For Trump If They Wanted To Get Paid.
There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of occasions on which Donald Trump has been seen standing in front of rooms with cheering men—and it’s almost always men—in hardhats. It’s such a common sight that when word comes down that coal miners are dying from the worst form of black lung in record numbers, or steel jobs are being crushed by Trump’s tariffs, it’s easy to sneer that these are people who “got what they asked for.”
But appearances can be more than deceiving. They can be dead wrong.
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, worker at Shell’s petrochemical plant in Pennsylvania were clearly informed that they didn’t have to appear at Trump’s rally last Tuesday. It was “not mandatory.” It was just that if they didn’t show up, they had to “take the day off with no pay.” This didn’t just apply to people working directly for Shell, but also for those who work for dozens of union contractors involved in construction at the site.