If you want higher wages let me tell you what to do.
You've go to talk to the workers in the shop with you.
You've got to build a union and make it strong
But if you all stick together boys it won't be long...

You'll get shorter hours...
Better working conditions...
Vacations with pay...
Take your kids to the sea shore

Now it ain't quite that simple so I'd better explain
Just why you gotts ride on the union train.
For if you wait for the boss to raise your pay
You'll all be waiting till judgement day...

We'll all be buried
Gone to heaven...
St Peter'll be the straw boss then, boys.

Now you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't,
Hw speeds up the work 'til you're about to faint.
You may be down and out but you ain't beaten,
You can pass out a leaflet, call a meeting.

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, you know...
He can always make a good living...
On what he takes out of blind men's cups.

You've got a union now and you're sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won't listen if one guy squawks,
But he's got to listen if the union talks.

He'd better...
He be mighty lonely one day...
If everybody decided to walk out on him.

Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous
Paying you all starvation wages.
You go to the boss and the boss will yell:
"Before I raise your pay, I'd see you all in hell!"
Puffing a big cigar feeling mightly slick,
Cos he thinks he's got your union licked.
He looks out of 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 boys you've come to the hardest time,
The boss'll try to break up your picket line.
He'll call out the police and the national guard,
They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
They'll raid your meetings, they'll hit you on the head,
Call everyone of you a goldarn red -

Unpatriotic...
Soviet spies...
Bomb throwers...
Even the kids.

But out at Ford here's what they found,
And out at Vultee here's what they found,
And out at Allis-Chalmers here's what the found,
And down at Bethlehem here's what they found:
That if you don't let red baiting break you up,
And if you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
And 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!