[kelnos]

As I replied to the parent, the laundry list of items is a little odd, since, in the US at least, the only thing there that's protected by law are the workplace health and safety standards.

And... I guess I must not be as optimistic as you are. If we didn't have things like OSHA, I do not expect that most workplaces would act in the best interests of their workers' health and safety. Look at countries where there aren't OSHA-like laws and see how well they do there. (Hint: not well.)

[thegrimmest]

Minimum wage is certainly protected by law.

  Look at countries where there aren't OSHA-like laws and see how well they do there

That's exactly my point though isn't it? We still rely on goods produced in those places, we just don't have any visibility into the conditions they are produced in. We've just offshored the suffering, not alleviated it.

[bbddg]

I'm fully agreed with this. The question is then what are the ways we can improve the working/living conditions of people around the world. The way workers around the world have fought for better conditions is by using their ability to withhold labor and collectively bargain with the capitalist class.

[thegrimmest]

And they should continue to do that. In fact this works quite well without government interference (labour/union law) or even in spite of it (See the Indian independence movement). I'm suggesting we need the government to protect us from violence when negotiations go awry, not to interfere in said negotiations between free private entities.