"Government's legislating and regulating how and when and on whom a capitalist can spend his capital cannot possibly be the best answer."
The reason why the government has done just this is because employers have in the past, fired people for the reasons I wrote about earlier. The government has had to step in and protect the worker because the employer had the power, money, and resources; and the employee had none of these. And sadly it is still going on even today, as we see in the posted article above.
... because politicians are all too happy to step in and fix whatever ails the voters, rather than acknowledge the fact that it's not the government's role.
Rather than turning to Uncle Sam for help, workers could, for instance, pool their measly resources to form a coalition and expose and put pressure on a-hole employers such as those you mentioned.
But, that would require some real effort, and politicians are all too happy to do whatever it takes to make the people like them. After all, we elected them to help us.