Trump’s Pittsburgh Speech Was a Paying Gig for the Audience

Thousands of union workers at a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant being built outside Pittsburgh were given the choice of attending a speech by President Trump on Tuesday or staying away — and losing some of their pay for the week.

“Your attendance is not mandatory,” one of the construction site’s contractors wrote in rules for the speech that were shared with its employees, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which first reported on the matter. But the rules said that only those who arrived at 7 a.m., had their work IDs scanned and then stood waiting for the president for several hours would get paid for the time.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for the contractor wrote, according to the paper.

View the complete August 17 article by Maggie Haberman on The New York Times website here.