Union Songs

Fire de People, Give yourself a Raise

A Song by Davis Gloff©2012 Davis Gloff

- [play]

Believe me, no Bull, ya wanna be
part of the Global economy
instead of evil of normal size,
Now you have the whole wide world to victimize!

Globalization's an open door
So many ways to steal from the poor
and the first of those many ways is
Fire the people, give yourself a raise

Fire the people give yourself a raise
Fire the people, give yourself a raise
If you long for NAFTA or for WTO praise
Fire some more people give yourself another raise.

Workers may want the profits shared,
So it's important to keep them scared
Kick out the unions that show some spine
Then cut their pay or move away they'll have to fall in line

There's the tale of International Rags
Manufacturing American Flags
Workers asked for a little more
Now we pledge allegiance to a flag from Singapore

Fire the people, give yourself a raise
Fire the people, give yourself a raise
Oh sure we know it's heartless, but my god how well it pays!
Fire the people give yourself a raise

Fire the people, give yourself a raise
Fire the people, give yourself a raise
We rob so many people in so very many ways.
Fire the people,
Fire the people,
Fire the people,
Give yourself a raise!

Notes

Many thanks to Davis Gloff for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection

Davis writes:
'"Fire de People, Give yourself a Raise" was written in 2006.. It was included on a self produced CD I made called "It's a Lie" which referred to the policies of the Bush administration. I sold that CD when I did live appearances, but I made the CD for the same reason I do a lot of things... because it was fun

I had been listening to Tom Lehrer and saw that he used a lot of different forms. I was beginning to think that writing music the way I'd been doing it was kind of like playing tennis without a net, so I decided to write in a specific style. Calypso came to mind, so I went with that. As before I wrote the words, the music and the arrangement in my home studio. The accompaniment is a midi file.

"Fire De People" is a song decrying globalization. At the time I wrote it I was working for a company that was boasting that it was globalized, and I saw that it hurt a lot more people than it helped. It made me angry, and the song helped me get that out. I've written a lot of poems (sonnets mostly) along the same lines.'

Find more of Davis' work in this collection

Visit Davis' website at http://www.macjams.com/artist/Davis+Gloff

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union songs..........a selection by mark gregory