Again, you're ignoring that countries with terrific worker protections have, on average, low union penetration. The one is uncorrelated with the other. In America, unions principally serve as a distraction. We periodically throw a few industries a bone while most workers get zero protection.
The fact of the matter is, God gave us Sunday off and unions gave us Saturday off. Unions were the reason child labor was banned in the U.S. We have worker’s comp and the 40 hour work week was standardized. None of those things would’ve resulted from the benevolence of profit maximizing corporations.
Unions are inefficient--only those represented get benefits. And they're unnecessary. Most countries with good worker rights have low union penetration. Unions in America are a dead end. They let electeds toss a bone to the ten percent of Americans in a union while delaying broad reforms.
Congress won't function until the cohorts who vote for representatives unwilling to champion broadly popular policy or labor protections dies out. That's going to take a hot minute, even assuming a death rate of 1.8M voters over the age of 55/year.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... (Control-F "Figure 1")
Congress is divided, but still generally productive [1]. Expanding labor protections simply isn't a political priority. Also, this can be done at the state and local levels.
> Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections?
About as many as there are laid off writers? Ten percent of Americans are in unions [2]. Doubling union membership in a year has less effect than waiting ten years to pass protections into law.
[1] https://datainnovation.org/2023/01/visualizing-congressional...
