Labor laws protect employees, ESPECIALLY unskilled workers

I am writing in response to one of my classmate's blogs; Kevin Kazcorowski. His blog post discusses labor laws and whether or not they benefit society. He believes that they negatively affect unemployment by costing businesses too much money. He is a self-proclaimed libertarian and typically believes the less government control, the better.

Besides disagreeing with his opinion, I believe that certain aspects of his arguments are weak and contradictory.

For one, he makes the argument that labor laws hurt the lower income and unskilled workers that they are in place to help because they encourage companies to dump their least valuable employees. I agree that companies in times of economic crisis tend to evaluate their staff and those that are not productive to the company tend to be laid off. However, I am offended that he would assume that unskilled laborers are the ones that aren't worth much to a company. In many cases, they are the backbone. A company that is struggling economically is not just going to dump all their stock people or janitors because they're unskilled. Companies NEED those employees or they never would have hired them in the first place. There is a huge demand for unskilled laborers in the United States because there are plenty of jobs that people with degrees and specialized training are not willing to do. As well, it is entirely possible for an employee with training and education to be deemed not as necessary to a company and let go. A few years ago when the unemployment rate shot up, the people that were laid off were office workers and white collar employees.
I argue that labor laws tend to help unskilled workers the most because they usually have positions that haven't traditionally come with benefits, and with wages that tend to stay close to minimum wage. I also think that Kevin misunderstands how minimum wage works. The reason minimum wage rises is because cost of living rises. Cost of living rises because prices rise. Not vice versa. Either way, they always stay proportional. If minimum wage were to rise to $1000/ hr, it wouldn't make businesses broke, because prices would be up proportionally, because that's what inflation does.
Kevin also makes the statement that unemployment is intuitively a choice. Those who choose to be unemployed are not factored into the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are actively searching for jobs.
Finally, I am confused by Kevin's idea that we are not a capitalistic society because there is unemployment. Capitalist markets have unemployment because they are based on competition, which also applies to competition for jobs. It almost sounds more like he'd prefer a socialistic market where everyone got to keep their jobs and get paid at a set rate.

Labor laws are in place to protect ALL employees, regardless of skill level. Benefits and minimum wage are certainly not going to cause businesses to go broke, nor are they a breach of the rights of those businesses. Workers need to be protected and a standard needs to be set for how they should be treated. Otherwise it is open to interpretation and that could take us down a dangerous road.