Do remember that without the government, there very literally would be no forty-hour work week. Individuals don’t have the same bargaining power as employers, not by a long-shot.
To your point about government needing to backstop working conditions, the minimum wage in Indiana is 7 dollars an hour, and yet I can get a job paying 18 dollars an hour at Taco Bell. Why do you imagine that to be the case if employers have so much bargaining power?
There is something I call the restaurant quality economy measure, a tracking method of how the economy is doing. If you go into a place like Taco Bell, or some otherwise middling restaurant and the service is really bad, and take this as a trend over a lot of eateries then is very likely you live in good economic times. Now switch that, if the average crappy place you go into has really good service then that's a good sign things have gone wrong.
Quality workers have moved down the economic ladder of employment. These people would gladly be doing something that paid more and had more prestige, but that employment doesn't exist.
What does that have to do with your statement. It's when the economy goes really bad employees realize they are in the position of power. It's this pretty much this way right now in most computing related employment, most companies have tightened down and invested more in AI than people. This means your workers will put up with a lot more bullshit in order to not be fired. And when the economy is doing bad all over, that's when the employers break out the abusive bullshit because they can? Are you going to go get a different job?
Be glad the law exists then.
So no, to hell with that paternalism.
I got a perfect score on the SAT reading comprehension section. Thanks for that valuation contribution to the discussion.