another of Kevin Baker's thoughtful songs

ONE HAND’S THE BOSS'S by Kevin Baker

Back in the Sixties I travelled through Queensland
My wallet grew thin and I needed a job.
I talked to some workers at a pub up in Noosa
They said “Head on to Gladstone if you need a few bob".
When l hitched there the next day the sparkies were striking,
Two weeks they'd been out and the company stood firm.
They were drinking their savings and wives were complaining
And they knew they were beat if it went the full term.

CHORUS - But you don't compromise, not when safety's the issue,
A worker's no use if he's killed or he's maimed.
Your loved ones may grieve but the company won't miss you;
It's profits not workers they're out to maintain.

You could see the strike drift as it limped through the third week,
And Friday a vote took them back to the job
And a sparkie I'd met let me borrow his hardhat
So I'd pass on his pillion as one of their mob.
The Aluminium plant now was nearing completion
With work left with firms in a sub-contract role
And security guards taking orders from Kaiser
Were turning away those not on the payroll.

I walked the site roads, got a job as a Lagger;
Cutting asbestos patterns for the junctions of pipes.
And the sun and the sandflies were no less than brutal
As I sawed in a white cloud round a tin prototype.
Overtime and allowances made the pay worth it
Insulating sub-contract for the giant Kaiser Steel
But the work force was shrinking as contracts completed
And the power of the Unions they were bringing to heel.

CHORUS

Men came to depend on the work of each other
And friendships were formed in the pub and crib-room.
And everyone knew when the site claimed a victim
That none of us were from such outcomes immune.
And when the rains came and the crust of the lagging
Oozed a white milk that caused many a slip
The talk in the crib-room became agitated
If you slipped on the high pipes you were on a death trip.

Now Sandy and Joe they knew safety and Unions,
They called us together and the feeling was plain.
Some people spoke, others listened in silence
And we voted to no longer work in the rain.
And when the Boss came he kept talking of deadlines,
How each overdue day was costing him dear.
Some sympathised but nobody was budging;
We'd all slipped enough to be guided by fear.

The next day we found we had no Joe or Sandy
They'd been barred from the barracks transferred from the site.
The Company required them for new work in Brisbane
Where everyone knew they'd be sacked on the quiet.
And leaderless now we went over our options:
No job was safe and our work prospects tight.
And when the Boss came one by one the men drifted
Out where the lagging bled a juice milky white.

CHORUS

Lars was a rigger, he was crazy with courage;
He'd leap over gaps at a breathtaking height.
That morning the greasy wet rigging pro­pelled him
Down to the ground in a tumbling flight.
His death fall was broken on the back of a workmate
But he'd bounced off the vats and the pipes as he fell
And he screamed with the pain till the ambulance took him
Away from his friends to his own private hell.

That night I went round to the ward where they put him,
He was stupid with drugs but still squirming with pain.
He’d broken his back and his spleen had been ruptured
And they doubted he'd ever go rigging again.
One moment his ravaged face smiled recognition
Then I lost him as agony called him away.
The next week I left to return to the City
And the friends I made there I've not seen to this day.

CHORUS

Many years later I read in the paper
Of the killer Asbestos and the cancer it spawns.
And I thought about Lars and I hoped I was different;
That I'd left before I too was one of its pawns.
I remembered the white dust that clogged up my nostrils,
And working the high pipes with a Dutchman I'd known.
He had said "When you work where your life is in danger
Make one hand the Boss's but the other your own."

CHORUS

from his CD Riding the Wind. The Songs of Kevin Baker, Volume IV, 2004. & it has not been recorded. Thanks to Ralph for somehow getting the words from the jpg I sent him - via OCR I believe (she sez. uncertainly)