We can learn a lot about Donald Trump’s approach to workers’ rights from his signature TV catchphrase – “you’re fired”.

More than 500 workers at Trump’s Las Vegas hotel are rallying to form a trade union. Last December, a majority of workers at the hotel voted for union representation. As the GOP scurries to discover a mechanism through which to disregard the results of primaries and caucuses in which Trump has won, Trump’s company has refused to honour the results of the workers’ vote.

Last year, five workers at the hotel were suspended for wearing union badges and distributing union literature. There have been accusations that management is guilty of verbal, physical and emotional assaults against the hotel’s largely foreign-born workforce.

On the campaign trail, Trump enjoys significant popularity amongst union-member voters. His central message – that American job vacancies should be filled by American people and that firms should be dissuaded from outsourcing work – taps into deeply held anxieties throughout the American working classes.

Trump’s campaign has been characterised by divisiveness. His record and rhetoric place him in direct conflict with the aspirations held by trade unions. The way in which he embraces working people’s anger at the “closed-shop Washington establishment” has so far allowed him to gloss over his own questionable record of human resource management.

How Trump might run the US remains to be seen, but if his apprenticeship at the helm of the Trump empire is anything to go by, his overtures towards ‘a more perfect union’ may start to sound a little flat. If the US presidential election is the most conspicuous job interview on Earth, then perhaps the working people of America should stretch out their index finger in Trump’s direction and say “Donald, you’re fired”.

The International Union of Food (IUF) has set up a petition urging Trump to recognise the workers’ ballot and start negotiating. You can sign here.