Friday Tunes: Blue Sky Mine

One of the first songs I recall hearing that clearly connected music to work is 1990’s Blue Sky Mine by Midnight Oil. The song is about the devastation that has flowed from the Wittenoom asbestos mine in Australia. Already, over 2000 of the 7000 miners employed by the Colonial Sugar Refinery (that owned the mine) and their 13,000 dependants who were on site between 1937 and 1966 have died from asbestos-related diseases.

Due to the employers hiding knowledge of the hazards posed by asbestos, asbestos was often used in local roads, gardens and school yards (it even doubled a snow in the Wizard of Oz). It is hard to adequately convey the immorality of asbestos employers (and governments who backed them--including Canada's Chretien and Harper governments) but Midnight Oil makes a valiant attempt.

Written from the perspective of an injured miner, the song talks about how disposable workers are (“So I’m caught in the junction still waiting for medicine”) and how employers lied (and continue to lie) about the effects of asbestos (“They’re crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers”). The worker also talks about how economic dependence limited his options then (“There’ll be food on the table tonight.”) and now (“Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night”), poignantly asking “Who's gonna save me?”

Blue Sky Mine also directly engages the profit imperative of capitalism that incentivizes such truly horrid behaviour from corporations (“The balance sheet is breaking up the sky” and “And the company takes what the company wants/And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground”).

I picked an acoustic cover by Genevieve Lemon, which shifts the song from anger into sadness but also make sthe lyrics a bit easier to hear.



Hey, hey-hey hey
There'll be food on the table tonight
Hey, hey, hey hey
There'll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token
Who'll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why

If I yell out at night there's a reply of bruised silence
The screen is no comfort I can't speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven's gate and I don't know why

But if I work all day at the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky

So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night

And if the blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me
Who's gonna save me?

But if I work all day...

And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground

Who's gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who's gonna save me?

We've got nothing to fear
In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean, the streets of a blue sky town

-- Bob Barnetson