I think it is reasonable to demand that companies have some responsibility for people who spend roughly 40 hours a week at their place following their orders.
Companies are not "forced to keep surplus employees", it's a reasonable expectation of law makers that people in charge of a company are able to plan ahead with their business strategy for more than 5 minutes.
It's the opposite: Companies want to retain employees through times of economic struggle, because it is just incredibly expensive and sometimes impossible to replace people.
The government has the same interest, because it's much cheaper to support companies and employees for a few months of economic struggle than to pay for social security etc. until they have found new work (which is hard in a time when the economy struggles).
It's a win situation for everyone involved: the company, the employee and society; but it requires law makers which don't live in a bubble of extremist ideology about how an economy is supposed to work.
That's pretty much the case why the US are struggling (and are changing the rules of how their GDP etc. is computed every year), while many European countries kept flourishing or are recovering fast:
In many countries in Europe law makers do whatever makes sense and works; where in the US every proposal is measured in relation to extremist ideologies ("OMG we can't do that!!! That's communist stuff! This is not Sweden where Stalin still rules!!! This is MURICA!!! Capitalism forever!!!").