Power In The Union

I think "Power in the Union" was Joe's best statement. It's a song I like to end labor shows with, because it sums up the direction I think we've got to go in the American labor movement and in American culture by and large. I started out singing about rootless and homeless people going West with nothing but bad memories and very limited prospects for the future. Every place they went, they created wealth through skill and sweat, only to find out they didn't own that wealth, that it belonged to somebody else.
A fellow would find out that he was just left to boom on down the track to the next job. And when that job ran out, held just have to boom on again. These people gradually began to understand that they were being had, that they were being robbed and swindled. They started to get together and form unions so that, through their organized strength, they could begin to get back the wealth they created. I think that began a process, and that process is still going on.
Only 45% of the people in the country involved in manufacturing belong to unions. The labor struggle hasn't even begun. People say unions are too strong. Those people haven't seen anything yet.
Hopefully, if everybody does their job right, if everybody keeps talking and singing and getting together, meeting in union halls, meeting in living rooms, meeting on street corners and on the picket line, if everybody on their block and on their job does their job right and learns to really think union, learns to think that "an injury to one is an injury to all" and that the employing class and the working class don't have anything in common, and that the struggle has to go on between them until the working class has to come out on top; if everybody does their job right, we will come to a time when we have one big union.
When all the working people in the country belong to one big giant union, then we can have a general strike. A strike like that would last for about half an hour. Then we could begin to build an industrial democracy where the tools of production were in the hands of the producers, where we could begin to produce for use instead of for profit, and get rid of some of this waste that's strangling us. We could create abundance for workers, and nothing for parasites.

Would you have mansions of gold in the sky,
And live in a shack, way in the back?
Would you have wings up in heaven to fly?
And starve here with rags on your back?

If you've had enough of the blood of the lamb
Then join in the grand Industrial band;
If for a change you would have eggs and ham,
Then come, do your share like a man.

If you like sluggers to beat off your head,
Then don't organize, all unions despise,
If you want nothing before you are dead,
Shake hands with your boss and look wise.

Come, all ye workers, from every land,
Come, join the grand Industrial band,
Then we our share of this earth shall demand.
Come on! Do your share like a man.

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