I disagree with such laws, along with minimum wage laws.
I am with you on minimum wage laws, they are nothing but a price control on workers, and price them out of the market, thus yanking up the unemployment rate.
The labor market is like any other market -- it is subject to the laws of supply and demand. If a company is known to hire workers and place them in unsafe conditions, less people will want to work there. The company will then have to either A) raise wages or B) make the conditions safer.
I get what you are saying, but I don't think it works that squeaky clean in the real world. For example, during the 19th century companies did all sorts of evils to workers, but people worked at them nonetheless. That is what led to the rise of the labor unions initially.
There was a letter a wife of a worker wrote to Henry Ford about the conditions at his factory, talking about how her husband was forced to work so hard, with no bathroom break the entire workday (or else lose your job), the bad conditions, etc...many supervisors of such factories just regarded workers no different than machine parts, i.e. hire it, work it as hard as possible, then when it wears out completely or breaks, replace it.
Ford fixed a lot of this, and killed the possibility of potentially unionizing his factory, with the $5 dollar workday and improved working conditions. This had the effect he claimed, in that it raised productivity because far more people were willing to work at the factory.
Considering that profit motive will drive every company to want to expand (whether or not its feesible is a different story, and many decide not to for various legitimate reasons), a good labor market for your business is important. Additionally, employee turnover is extremely costly. Finally, its in a company's best interest to attract the highest quality of workers possible. Therefore, it behooves companies to provide its employees with competitive wages (competitive being relative to the rest of the industry, of course) and safe working conditions.
In a developed free-market system, I agree, but in a developing market economy, especially with a ready supply of workers, working conditions can be horrendous. Especially with industrial jobs on an assembly line, where only the lowest-quality workers are required.
Remember, they would chain up children to the machinery in those days even.
As the economy develops however, businesses tend to do a lot more like you say, offering good wages and safe working conditions for the workers because if not they will get so much bad press no one will work at them plus possibly regulations made against them.
I think what is needed are light and efficient regulation and laws. Laissez-faire, IMO, is the ideal, but you can never quite get there. It's like government. No government is an ideal, but you need it nonetheless.
How many companies actually pay its workers the minimum wage? Not many. Most companies are voluntarily paying employees more than minimum wage for the above reasons. But a raising minimum wage trickles up to make everything more expensive, then other employers must raise their salaries to compensate, and thus we will continue to perpetually have a relatively high unemployment rate, even when times are "good."
Yup.
:sleep_125