Friday Tunes: There is Power in a Union

This week’s instalment of labour themes in popular culture is Billy Bragg’s There is Power in the Union. This was mostly recently heard on the soundtrack of Pride. It is popular to suggest that unions are irrelevant these days, especially in Alberta. Certainly trade unionism has been damaged by 40 years of anti-worker legislation and policy.

But come back to Bragg’s lyrics for a minute, especially, “The union forever defending our rights” and “Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us”. Over the past few years, Alberta’s public-sector unions, however beaten up, have successfully fended off significant efforts by the Conservative government to strip workers of wages and pensions.  And, it looks like they will have to do so again this spring.

While many traditional forms of protest have been foreclosed by government legislation prohibiting strikes, this legislation does not resolve the underlying conflict that gives rise to resistance. Instead, we’ve seen organized labour fight for workers rights in the court and, increasingly, in the public sphere. This includes public meetings and television ads showing the value of public-sector workers  It also includes online documentaries are used to show the effect of government policies that grind the wages and workers conditions of public sector unions, such as this AUPE film on senior’s care.

Money speaks for money, the devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child

There is indeed power in a union. That is way the government keeps attacking them.



There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand there is power in a union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses' way, sir

The union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and out sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a union

Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackies out to cheat us?

Money speaks for money, the devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a union

The union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and out sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a union.

-- Bob Barnetson