Talking Union - 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, ‘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!