You can have armchairs on the factory floor if you like but they won't make up for crappy wages. Fact is an organised workforce gets better pay and benefits.
And those laws can be taken away by a hostile legislature. And that's exactly what is going to happen.
I asked Why do American companies have to pass on increased labour costs to consumers? I have my answer. American companies pass on the increase because they can't figure out how to absorb it by being more efficient. Did you miss the quality movement as espoused by Deming?
Same fallacious argument. In the company I work for, we have both union and nonunion branches. The nonunion branches pay far better and have better benefits packages than our union counterparts. Oh, and did I mention the company is employee-owned??
Do really think without unions or government regulations that 12 year old children would still be working 14 hour shifts in coal mines? The example I'm thinking of is the struggle around the Factory Acts and child labour in the UK during the 19th Century. It's complex and multi-faceted but what is clear is that a group of influential people, possibly using Christian theology (not sure of that) tried time and time again to get the parliament to sort these matters out in the face of stringent opposition from capitalists and parliamentarians. It hadn't been that long in British society where children were seen as something other than small adults. Seems strange to us now but there was a paucity of understanding of human development.
And the culture built toward the opinion that children should not work like adults, which created the law. It was not the opposite. The law did not manipulate the culture until it changed to treat children differently.
If that were the case then the law would not have been required as culture would already have dictated practise.
The law was required because kids were working in coal mines, it wasnt brought in because someone thought it would be a good idea just in case someone decided to put the kids to work.
As you can see even after the passing of child labour laws some industries continued to use child labour.
I wonder how workers in the U.S. get along now without unions. I'm 70-years old and retired now but I never joined a union. I got along fine.