Last week, President Trump spoke to a large crowd of union workers employed by Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The workers were told that attendance wasn’t mandatory, but only those who showed up to the speech would be paid for the day and would be eligible for overtime pay. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette uncovered workers who were unhappy with being faced with the option of attending Trump’s speech or being “docked” pay; they weren’t allowed to take a personal day or sick day if they didn’t attend.
Speaking to the Post-Gazette:
Shell spokesman Ray Fisher explained that the workers onsite have a 56-hour workweek, with 16 hours of overtime built in. That means those workers who attended Mr. Trump’s speech and showed up for work Friday, meeting the overtime threshold, were being paid at a rate of time and a half, while those who didn’t go to hear the president were being paid the regular rate, despite the fact that both groups did not do work on the site Tuesday.
You can read the rest of the blah-blah-blahs of the story if you’re so inclined by clicking the link above. I’m too busy recovering my eyeballs that became lodged in the back of my skull after clicking on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s “expose” of this tragic miscarriage of worker’s rights to worry about sharing the details. If I were so inclined, I could find many, many examples of workers being “required” to attend speeches given by leftists. This whole thing is stupid, but it’s 2019. Annoyed is a proper response. Surprise, however, is not. But allow me to break the stupid down for you anyway.
At this point in my life, I’m fully aware that I rarely do any actual work. I sit on my butt most of the day and write. A couple of weeks ago, I finally broke down and bought a standing desk, but, and please don’t tell my wife, I rarely use it. Even if I did, standing while writing still doesn’t exactly classify as real honest-to-goodness work. I should know, I’ve done real work.
I’ve worked roofing jobs, been covered in grease in garages, done tree-service work. I’ve stood for hours upon hours doing the same thing over and over in machine shops and bakeries. I’ve done back-breaking work and I’ve done work so tedious that the description “mind-numbing” isn’t adequate. And I promise you that if any of my bosses had announced that instead of actual work I would be listening to a speaker, I would have loudly cheered in order to mask my sobs of joy. And I wouldn’t have even cared who the speaker was.
You mean that instead of risking life and limb to saw off tree limbs in the sweltering sun I get to do nothing while someone else talks and I get paid for it? You mean that instead of having to load tiny pieces of metal into a machine over and over for hours upon hours that feel like days I get to do nothing but listen to a speech and I get paid for it? You mean that instead of doing my manual labor job at a petrochemical plant I get to listen to the president of the United States speak and I get paid for it?
You get my point, right? Furthermore, management shouldn’t have to tell the workers that they can’t use a sick day or personal day to miss the speech. Why would anyone with half a brain in their head waste a sick or personal day on a day that they get paid to do nothing? But, that’s where we are.
This whole nonsense — the complaints from some of the workers and the growing uproar from the national media — is proof of how partisanship trumps common sense in 2019. If anything, socialists like AOC and Bernie should be praising the management of Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County for redistributing wealth via paychecks for doing nothing but listening to a speech. That’s how stupid this whole thing is.
The complaints about this are solely because of who the speaker was. This is a continued demonstration that those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome can’t control themselves and must throw a hissy fit at any and everything related to Donald Trump.
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