The Devil vs. the Trade Unions

Who is the real boss?

A million people standing in picket lines

Mental labor, scarred hands and seared lungs.

The Union strikes against the man,

Claiming there is terror, torment, and torture

In a deadly cycle of feeding hand

Gnawing on feeding hand.

 

Bosses bravado rails on dentals and pension,

Cost of living, vacations, vision, and dues.

There is nothing sacred to the Machine.

Well-groomed hands on a mountain of greasy cogs

Now freezing in Dearborn, Seattle, NY, Boston, LA

            Toronto, Wichita, the world around.

 

Fatcats make dimes from freetime crimes

As they grind the teeth of all the gears.

Eating meals we’d work for years

In minutes over cocktails with union cronies.

Bosses claim to be our friends

As from our pensions fatcats skim

And the bosses take their cut as well.

 

It’s not our fight; we were happy here.

Society’s discontent is catching

As billion-dollar bailouts make both bosses

Happy as thousand dollar clams consumed in talks.

So incited to riot by billion dollar men,

We chose the cold pickets

Until the end.

 

Fatcats forgetting is not uncommon

In that environment, I’d forget too.

It’s not al about perks and pay,

Just so long as the work is done today.

The bosses forgot who the real king is:

The Prince of the Air, for their industry

Was his.

 

In walked that Devil, the fiend from below,

Smooth-Walker, Fast-talker through hooker haze and blow.

Diablo slides to the table, slams down a folder in red

Scattering remnants of clams to their homes on velvet floors,

And the Devil produces a sheaf of contracts, all signed.

 

It’s the unstoppable force, immovable object,

            And a healthy dose of chaos colliding.

Gain vs. Profit vs. Product to resolve.

But the Trickster’s better than any mere man:

Union bosses led out in cuffs for collusion to steal

Leaving Legion-Deceiver to deal with the rest.

 

The Devil always deals wheels within wheels,

Flushing all the CEOs away.

But in the space of a day, new ones rise up

With new contracts and new schemes to play.

 

The Devil comes to us common man,

With a huge ice rock on his pimping hand,

“You’re still not free,” the Devil leers

As he smacks us with his pimp hand for twenty more years.

“You hoes are mine, and have no doubt, unlike bosses and CEOs,

You have no way out! Hell’s for the fab, high-rollers and large,

You’ll never see it. But do not despair,

You’re already trapped in your perpetual hell.

At least here, you’ll get some work done as well.

 

Now, shut the hell up and get back to work.”

Reviews

[The They]

Big unions, big corporations, big government. All these are symptoms of a disease which we must cure: Selfishness, greed, egotism -all contributions to the collective hallucination.