There is Power in a Union

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

Joe Hill's pro-union 1913 song is based on the tune of "There is Power in the Blood of the Lamb," a hymn written by Lewis E. Jones in 1899. There's a reference to the hymn in the third verse.

Would you have freedom from wage slavery,
Then join in the grand Industrial band;
Would you from mis'ry and hunger be free,
Then come! Do your share, like a man.

Chorus:
There is pow'r, there is pow'r
In a band of workingmen.
When they stand hand in hand,
That's a pow'r, that's a pow'r
That must rule in every land--
One Industrial Union Grand.

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 "nuff" 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 in the grand Industrial band.
Then we our share of this earth shall demand.
Come on! Do your share, like a man.

The song was published in Songs of the Workers: On the road, In the Jungles, And in the Shops, 8th Ed., AKA "The Little Red Songbook" (Cleveland: I.W.W. Publishing Bureau, 1914)

Billy Bragg probably took the name for his song in homage to Joe Hill, but the tune Bragg uses is George Root's 1862 "Battle Cry of Freedom," written for the Union army in the American Civil War. Confederate composers had their versions too, without the word "union" in the chorus. This can explain the sense of deja vu that Billy Bragg fans may feel while watching Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War, as Root's tune is on the soundtrack.