> The assembly line is as good as the worst/slowest person on it, so there is no advantage in being faster at putting bolts in, or whatever you do [...]
I guess you have no experience with assembly lines?
> (unions can sometimes push safety standards, but also comes from others who have the union take credit)
Btw, health and safety are what economists call a 'normal good'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_good
> In economics, a normal good is a type of a good for which consumers increase their demand due to an increase in income, unlike inferior goods, for which the opposite is observed. When there is an increase in a person's income, for example due to a wage rise, a good for which the demand rises due to the wage increase, is referred as a normal good. Conversely, the demand for normal goods declines when the income decreases, for example due to a wage decrease or layoffs.
That explains fairly well, why rich countries all have more-or-less similar health and safety standards despite very different histories and especially histories of labour activism, and why poor countries fare worse in this respect--even if some of them have laws on the books that are just as strict.
