OK, I guess I shamed myself into doing a transcription of the song. But hey, I'm from Wisconsin and I don't catch all this stuff - so could the rest of you listen to the recording and gently offer corrections? In deference to Jon Bartlett, we seek not a "definitive" version - just a reasonably good transcription....

THE FACTORY LAD
(Colin Dryden)

You wake up in the morning, the morn's as black as night
Your mother's shouting up the stairs, and you know she's winning the fight
So you venture out of the bed, my lad, for you know it's getting late
And it's down the stairs and up the road and through the factory gate.

Chorus:
    Turning steel how do you feel,
      as in the chuck you spin?
    If you felt like me, you'd roll right out
      and never roll back in.

Sleet and dark the morning, as you squeeze in through the gate
As you clock in, aye yon bell will ring; eight hours is your fate.
Off comes the coat, up go the sleeves and "right, lads" is the cry,
With an eye on the clock and t'other on your lathe, you wish that time could fly.
CHORUS

But time can't fly as fast as a lathe, and it's work you must,
With the grinding, groaning, spinning metal, the hot air and the dust …
And it's many the time I'm with me girl and I'm walking through the park,
While gazing on the turning steel or the welder's blinding spark.
CHORUS

Old Tom, he left last week, and his final bell did ring -
With his hair as white as the face beneath his oily sunken skin
Well, he made a speech and he bid farewell to a lifetime working here,
But as I shook his hand, I thought of hell – at a lathe and forty years.
CHORUS

So when my time comes, as come it must, I'll leave this place -
And I'll walk right down past the charge-hand's dock and never turn my face,
Up through the gates into the sun, and I'll leave it all behind -
With one regret, for the lads I've left, to carry on the grind.
CHORUS


The last two lines are missing from the recording in the link. Luckily, Bob and the DT more-or-less agree on those lines. Is there a chorus at the end?

-Joe-

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Spotify has a very nice recording of this song by the Fagan Family. It agrees more closely with Bob's transcription.