Pete Seeger - Talking Union lyrics

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
‘twont be 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
But the boss says you ain't
He speeds up the work till
You're ‘bout to faint
You may be 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

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!