“I am your voice,” President-elect Donald J. Trump declared at the Republican National Convention. In another campaign speech, he told his supporters, “I alone can fix it.”

Before he has even taken office, Mr. Trump has tried that go-it-alone strategy on behalf of American workers. He has browbeaten Carrier into reversing a decision to move some jobs from Indiana to Mexico, and he attempted — unsuccessfully — to do the same with Rexnord, which owns a neighboring manufacturing plant. But publicity stunts and Twitter rants are no substitute for a comprehensive, coherent economic strategy that invests in America and lifts up the voices and the power of working people.

Working people do not want a savior to speak for us. We want to raise our own voices through our unions — and those voices are more essential than ever. The share of income going to the middle class has fallen in almost perfect correlation with the declining percentage of people working in jobs where they enjoy a union. Collective, democratic representation in the workplace is essential to shared and durable economic prosperity.

Yet Mr. Trump’s emerging cabinet and policy pronouncements seem to treat actual working people as bottom lines rather than human beings, our unions as a threat rather than a partner, and rising wages as a problem rather than the foundation of our prosperity.