One test of Trump's seriousness about helping the average worker will be how (or even if) he responds to labor disputes.
There’s no better example of those conflicting pressures than the strike outside the Momentive Performance Materials plant, where workers have been picketing for close to 100 days, protesting the latest round of givebacks demanded by the hedge fund managers who bought the plant when General Electric spun it off in 2006. That group of managers until recently included Steve Schwarzman, head of the private equity giant Blackstone — who chairs Trump’s advisory panel of CEOs known as the Strategy and Policy Forum. The panel’s mandate, Trump has said, is to “discuss all the things you think we can do to bring back our jobs.”
While Trump has been quick to rip companies on Twitter when they move jobs overseas, he hasn’t yet used his bully pulpit to take sides in a labor-management dispute...