Story Behind The Song

My grandfather came to the US from Finland. He worked for Edison Electric initially but then was laid off during the depression. In order to keep his family fed he took a job at a bakery where there were no 40 hour workweeks or time off. He barely saw my mother or grandmother excepting for the short time when he came home from work and went to sleep. This was the American version of the sweatshop. He dared not complain because, waiting for his job were 40 other unemployed people. This continued for years until a union organized the bakery and the workers finally began to get the basic benefits we all take for granted. A new sweatshop mentality has emerged with low paying jobs and merciless hours infringing on family time and basic human rights in order to profit the few. This is offshoring. Some companies choose to place work overseas instead of in their neighborhoods and the result is unemployment or underemployment and this debacle of an economy we see now. That is the story of the millwright. Lastly the story of Donna. A real person who worked in the now gutted IT field for many years. She found herself going from a steady job to sporadic contracting as her companies went offshore or hired temporary H1b visa workers much cheaper. Donna passed away in 2006 of cancer but she worked incessantly to bring the plight of US IT professionals and engineers to the national radar. Mad in America is about all these people - the underpaid overworked baker - the factory worker watching his good paying job offshored - and the computer professional made redundant to save a buck.

Song Description

Picture yourself a baker in a sweatshop bakery. Its the turn of the century and during the economic depression in the 1930s. You are working 14 hour days 7 days a week with no chance of a day off in sight. There are 40 people waiting at the door if you complain. Or maybe youre a millwright with a large manufacturing company. One day you are working steady making a good living for you and your family - the next - unemployed as your career and factory is sent to China. How do you feel? Or lastly. You work in Information technology - the new careers we were all supposed to have when the electronics industry was given to Japan. We'd be a service economy not manufacturing - and everyone agreed this was ok. You come into work one day and are told your being laid off after years of working in this company. How do you feel - what do you do now?

Lyrics

Mad in America - Steve Dube - all rights reserved - Sunday, November 23, 2003 revised Sunday, April 29, 2007

Grandfather worked in a Kitchen, making bread out of four and wheat.
Right off the boat from Finland, to live in the land of the free.

He was workin them ovens, sweating in summer's heat. On the floor from one till midnight, seven days a week.
And grandma told him, you'd better slow down, he didn't pay her no mind.
If it wasn't for the union getting Sundays off, he'd have died long before his time.

Chorus:

Mad in America, fit to be tied, wondering how it got this way
Mad in America, unemployed, they keep on sending our jobs away.

(not in America) under-employed there's got to be a better way.

Her dad used to work in a factory, keeping his line up and running.
There wasn't a motor he couldn't fix, he was worth every dime he was earning.

One day his boss walked up to him, said it was time to retire,
Asked him why, they looked straight in the eyes, the plant was moving to China.

We're global now, we have to compete, sure you can understand why. Our bottom line looks very good - if we leave this country behind.

Chorus

Donna worked with computers, telling machines what to do. From the punch card days to the desktop ways, since 1972.

She burned the midnight oil, sometimes till quarter to 3. Made sure things were running right, before laying her head to sleep.

You can guess her suprise that Friday morning, when she opened the office door, and heard them say that she was no longer needed, they were sending her job offshore.

CHorus

There has to be a better way