I understand the math, but not the logic. If you can cut your employee's hours from 40 to 20, why did you have them on the payroll for 40 hours in the first place. I would suppose you hire someone because you have work to be done, not because you want to insure they only receive a certain amount of money. Capitalism works, but we have to accept that labor is part of that system. If the laborer sets his price above what the market will bear, he will be priced out of the market just as will the businessman who overprices his product. Neither wage or price controls ever work but we keep trying.
But the point is that the owner of the business is going to have to make changes that would be detrimental to his employees and customers.