Ohio miners forced to attend Romney rally without pay...

[LennyLen]

It begs the question why any of the managers said the event was mandatory, if nothing was done anyways if you didn't go.

Something that hasn't been brought up yet, which is very important, is were those managers instructed to tell staff that, or did they take it upon themselves to tell the staff.

I'm a manager at my workplace, but I certainly don't have the authority to make anything mandatory. I just ensure that staff are doing the jobs they were hired to do and make critical decisions.