BY HANK REICHMAN
“Union Maid,” written in 1940 by the great folk singer Woody Guthrie, is one of the classic anthems of the American labor movement. Pete Seeger, who would help make the song famous as a member of the Almanac Singers, wrote of its creation:
I’m proud to say I was present when ‘Union Maid’ was written in June, 1940, in the plain little office of the Oklahoma City Communist Party. Bob Wood, local organizer, had asked Woody Guthrie and me to sing there the night before for a small group of striking oil workers. Early next morning, Woody got to the typewriter and hammered out the first two verses of ‘Union Maid’ set to a European tune that Robert Schumann arranged for piano (‘The Merry Farmer’) back in the early 1800s. Of course, it’s the chorus that really makes it – its tune, ‘Red Wing,’ was copyrighted early in the 1900s.
But, as Arthur Goldstein, a New York high school teacher and union activist, notes on his NYC Educator blog, “things have changed” since 1940. So Goldstein, “reborn as a unionist” after the Janus decision, set about updating the lyrics.
I updated Woody Guthrie's song, Union Maid, to reflect 2018. We aren't really being scared, but rather fooled. More importantly, women are on the front lines rather than in the ladies' auxiliary. You can hear it from this link. https://t.co/J6dYu1SUbc pic.twitter.com/rEfmuyX8u4
— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) August 27, 2018
In Goldstein’s version the song’s famous opening line, “There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, of the goons and the ginks, and the company finks, and the sheriffs who made the raids…” becomes “There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, of the Kochs and the Trumps and the hedge fund chumps who thought they had her played…” And while in the ’30s and ’40s the weapons deployed against unions relied overwhelmingly on fear and force (“Oh, you can’t scare me I’m sticking with the union…”), today anti-union tactics are as much about fooling us with misleading terms like “right to work” as they are about intimidation (although there’s more than enough of that too, for sure). So Goldstein updates the chorus like this: “you can’t fool me, I’m sticking with the union.”
Goldstein and a guitarist friend recorded the new version on a home computer and you can listen to it online. It’s worth hearing — and singing, too! Goldstein hopes to make a video version with a full bluegrass band. I’m hoping he does.
