There are collective work songs, shanties or the chain gang songs and so forth. And there are individual songs, like the kind of songs people sing when they are working alone, either to help the rhythm (such as a weaver), or just to cheer themselves up and keep themeslves awake(shepherds for example), or maybe for some other purpose (a cowboy singing to quieteh the cattle.) And there are somngs about work, or about accidents that have happened, or about strikes...

In the last resort all folk songs "can be coordinated with the social studies curriculum" - maybe that's one of the best answers to the old question "what is a folk song?"