It's a good start of a song that has meaning and a good subject matter. It won't be a folk song until the "folk" start singing it for a number of years.

I'd like to see the song developed by going somewhere as in a story line rather than a complaint repeated. It could be that the character singing the song has a history that could be shown. Also, you switch from "I" to "we" which is confusing. You might stick to an "I".

No, writing a contemporary song about working conditions doesn't yet qualify it even though the subject matter can be found in labor songs. It needs to be set in motion and people need to pick it up and want to sing it and perhaps tinker with it so that it has variants. Then it becomes a folk song.

I think that if you just write a song, it may or may not catch on. But until it does, it's not really a folk song. It doesn't need to hit the charts as a pop song but there has to be a sub-culture to keep it going such as a work crew that passes it on down to the next generation.

I'm in favor of writing these kinds of songs however because as is said in one of the famous folk songs about man vrs. the machine, "A man ain't nothin' but a man and before I let that steam drill beat me down, I'll die with a hammer in my hand."

Frank Hamilton