The crowd members of the Trump factory speech were paid to listen to it and were banished from "anything perceived as a resistance"

Workers at a Royal Dutch Shell plant in Pennsylvania were forced to choose to attend a Donald Trump speech or earn less than their colleagues who had done so.

Attendance was optional, but contractors who chose not to stand in the crowd would not be eligible for a one-and-a-half-time pay on arrival at work on Fridays. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Workers at the unfinished complex of Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex were scheduled to arrive at 7 am, scan their identity cards and stand for hours until the beginning of the US President's speech.

"NO SCAN, NO PAY", a supervisor of one of the contractors wrote to the workers.

The contractor's note also forbade shouting, demonstrations or "anything perceived as resistance" in Trump's speech, according to the newspaper.

"An underlying theme of the event is to promote the goodwill of the unions," the document says. "Your construction industry leaders and your employment delegates have agreed."

Several companies with thousands of unionized workers have contracts with Shell, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world.

The Washington Post could not immediately contact Shell or the factory unions on Saturday.

Mr. Trump has a long history of false claims that Liberal protesters were paid to protest. When he was elected to the presidency, he was accused by many people of being "professional protesters" "incited by the media".

When the women protested Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, he said they were "paid professionals".

And when protests erupted at airports in 2017 in response to Mr. Trump's ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-dominated countries, he said the protesters were "professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters". .

The President's speech on Tuesday was sometimes felt like a campaign rally, The Washington Post reported.

Between his remarks on US energy production, Trump urged workers to support his reelection and complained of his alleged enemies: the media, the Democrats running for president and the Oscars.

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

Shell spokesman Ray Fisher told the Post-Gazette Factory workers have a 56-hour work week, which includes 16 hours of overtime pay – so workers who showed up on Tuesday were paid a higher rate for the week.

Another Shell spokesperson, Curtis Smith, said that workers who chose to avoid assembly were entitled to "paid leave", which did not count as hours worked and therefore did not require pay for hours. additional.

Trump's speech was treated as a training that differs from other training sessions only in that it included "a guest speaker who happened to be the president," said Mr. Smith.

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"We do it several times a year with different stakeholders," he said. Newsweek. "The morning session (7am to 10am) included safety training and other work-related activities."

Ken Broadbent, Commercial Director of Union Steamfitters Local 449, said his workers respected Mr. Trump for his title, whether they liked it or not.

Anyone who does not want to go to work on the day of Mr. Trump's speech could skip it, he said.

"That's exactly what Shell wanted to do, and we did it," said Broadbent.

The Washington Post