Talking Union Lyrics
Talking Union - Almanac Singers/Pete Seeger
If you want higher wages let me tell you what to do
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you
You got to build you a union got to make it strong
But if you all stick together now won't he long
You'll get shorter hours
Better working conditions vacations with pay
Take your kids to the seashore
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 everybady
Dicide work out on him
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
Seegar 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 Japanese biees
Bomb throwers even the kids
But out in Detroit here's what they found
And out in Frisco here's what they found
And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found
And down in Bethlehem here's what they found
That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up
If you don't let vigilantes break you up
And if you don't let race hatred break you up
You'll win what I mean
Take it easy but take it