No disrespect meant to
Joe Hill. Here's
Billy Bragg's
version.
From the
Help Save the Youth of America CD 1988.
It also appears on
Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, 1986.
There Is Power In A Union
There is power in a factory, power in the land,
Power in the hand of the worker.
But it all counts for nothing if together we don't stand.
There is power in a union.
The lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood.
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for.
The factories and the farmland, the trenches full of mud;
For war has always been the bosses' way, Sir.
The union forever defending our rights,
Out with the blackleg, all workers unite.
With our brothers and our sisters in many far-off lands,
There is power in a union.
I long for the morning when they realize
That jelousy and unjust laws cannot defeat us.
Who'll stand up for workers who cannot organize
When the bosses send their lackeys out to cheat us?
Money speaks for Money, the Devil for his own;
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
A comfort for the widow, a light to the child;
There is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights.
Out with the blackleg, all workers unite.
With our brothers and our sisters, together we will stand.
There is power in a union.
--Billy Bragg