Talking Union

It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain

Just why you got to ride on the union train;

‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,

We’ll all be waiting till Judgment Day;

We’ll all he buried – gone to Heaven –

Saint Peter’ll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you’re underpaid, hut the boss says you ain’t;

He speeds up the work till you’re ’bout to faint,

You may he down and out, but you ain’t beaten,

Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin’

Talk it over – speak your mind –

Decide to do something about it.

‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool

To go to your meeting and act like a stool;

But you can always tell a stool, though – that’s a fact;

He’s got a yellow streak running down his back;

He doesn’t have to stool – he’ll always make a good living

On what he takes out of blind men’s cups.

You got a union now; you’re sitting pretty;

Put some of the boys on the steering committee.

The boss won’t listen when one man squawks.

But he’s got to listen when the union talks.

He better –

He’ll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous,

They’re paying you all starvation wages;

You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,

“Before I’d raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell.”

Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,

He thinks he’s got your union licked.

He looks out the window, and what does he see

But a thousand pickets, and they all agree

He’s a bastard – unfair – slave driver –

Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you’ve come to the hardest time;

The boss will try to bust your picket line.

He’ll call out the police, the National Guard;

They’ll tell you it’s a crime to have a union card.

They’ll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.

Call every one of you a goddamn Red –

Unpatriotic – Moscow agents –

Bomb throwers, even the kids.