Even as solid a conservative, Chicago School economist as Milton Friedman avers the obvious, that without labor syndicalism in the 20's and 30's, there'd be no mass middle class that gave Nixon and Reagan the White House. One has to have enough of a stake in the system to have something to lose if the wheels come off, and therefore to be a conservative.
Without the mass labor movement to redress the imbalances in the labor "market" (which was always in oligopsonous imbalance in the 19th century, however much the people who professed to admire classical economics may have praised Adam Smith and the idea of a market-clearing wage), workers would never have participated sufficiently in the creation of wealth in the economy, to begin to become conservatives. In the early 1920's, too many workers worked 60-80 hour weeks at hard physical labor, had no ability to bargain over wages, didn't participate in civic life, and died at alarming rates in heavy-industrial jobs like mining, railroading, and smelting. And Friedman backs that up.
Unless one takes away from prospective employers the ability to flood the market with surplus labor, and then to combine among themselves to keep wages low (as a court case just last year demonstrated in the offshore drilling industry -- a case that has received zero publicity despite having just proved that the offshore drilling contractors maintained their illegal combination for thirty years), then the workers can never negotiate in a fair market for the value of their labor. Which is the whole idea of union-busting and hiring illegals.
For a free-market economy to work, it has to be regulated to some extent in order to remain free, and not become the captive of one or another party. Businessmen insist on free markets -- except when it's time to negotiate in good faith on the cost side. Then they try to cheat. Uncle Milton said it, and I believe it.
But would he (does he?) say that about today's work force.
The previous generations of workers were captive to both geography and station and at the mercy of local employment.
Today with cheap mobility and instant information, I don't think the image of a wage slave still holds.
As O'Reilly says...."Am I wrong?"