President-elect Donald Trump, should he choose to be, could easily be accepted among those whose mantra is “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”  He has certainly made his bones when it comes to playing people and the latest time that he has played someone is playing out right now in the wake of his 2016 presidential election victory.  I would say that Governor Chris Christie, Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Rudy Giuliani and even Mitt Romney can be counted among those who were played and that there are still more names to come.

All of the working middle class people who voted for President-elect Trump, even if they are not getting what they deserve, are certainly getting what they voted for; and this is just the beginning.  Even union members voted for Mr. Trump in very large numbers and as a group, they will be especially disappointed by the time that he is through fleecing them.  Right now he is showing signs by way of his cabinet nominees that he has no intentions of keeping the promises that he made to them during the general election.  If his nominees are confirmed, that is when the real problems for labor and the rest of middle class Americans will really begin.

All of the people that Mr. Trump has selected to fill his cabinet positions thus far are extremely rich.  Many of them are billionaires and millionaires who either represent or have fought for big business and they are being put into place, according to Mr. Trump, to champion the cause of poor, middle class and other everyday Americans.  During the primaries and general election, Mr. Trump said that he would protect entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare and work to rebuild the middle class.  From the looks of things right now, that will not be the case.

Those school teachers who voted for him can look forward to him throwing his weight behind an increase in the number of charter schools while using funds from public education to help to assure the success of those charter schools.  Those same school teachers along with all of the other union workers who voted for Mr. Trump can look forward to an increase in the number and ferocity of the attacks on private sector and public sector unions.  These sorts of attacks have played a key part in reducing the overall percentage of the workforce represented by unions from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics first began tracking this information to the current 11.1 percent.  In the case of public sector unions, based on lessons learned and best practices, these attacks will probably be fashioned after those led in 2011 by Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin since he was so successful in getting his ‘anti-union law’ passed.

If you are a union member, whether or not you voted for Mr. Trump is now irrelevant.  What is relevant is that if necessary, you be prepared to fight to maintain the rights that you have already worked so hard to gain as workers.  You must also fight to restore the power that you once wielded by first re-establishing the percentage of workers that you once represented in the work force and then exceeding that percentage.

Mr. Trump has had no problem in proving time-and-again that his promises are empty and meaningless and hold no value.  So it is reasonable for all Americans to be cautious and demand that he prove himself by showing that he can be the president to all of the people and govern fairly.  And because he is such an unconventional President-elect and appears to be confused at times as to how to prioritize his personal businesses and his responsibilities to them versus what is in the best interest of America, we should be cautious and assure that he prove himself in that arena as well.  He needs to make his bones so-to-speak; kind of like he has done as a player.

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line