"Pa. Workers Forced To Choose Between Watching Trump, No Pay Or Using Paid Time Off", 17 August 2019 

Workers at a petrochemical plant in western Pennsylvania were given a choice ahead of President Trump's visit to the site on Tuesday: attend the president's speech, stay home without pay or use up part of their paid time off...

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the company did not write the notice to workers. Broadbent said it was devised by a construction site contractor, which did not reply to a request for comment.

Smith said if workers chose not to attend the president's speech, they had the option to either stay home without pay or take a paid-time-off day.

Missing a day of work could amount to $700 in pay, benefits and a per diem payment that out-of-town workers receive, a union leader told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"Tuesday was treated as a training (work) day with a guest speaker who happened to be the President," Smith told NPR in a statement. "It was understood some would choose not to attend the presidential visit and were given the option to take paid time off (PTO) instead."

The memo, which was first reported by the Post-Gazette, instructed workers to show up at 7 a.m., scan their ID cards and stand for hours through lunch. Workers were told not to shout, protest or do anything that could be "viewed as resistance," the newspaper reported...