That base could actually be self-interest.
Employees who are stressed because they daren't take time off sick, or can't get their health problems adequately treated, aren't the best employees.
Employees who feel powerless, have no sense of agency or choice, or are only there because they can't afford to take the risk of trying to find a better job...are those the people that businesses want talking to their customers, making their business decisions, or manufacturing their products?
Employees who ARE sick, but cannot afford to take time off in case they're fired - or just not paid - and come into work, potentially infecting the rest of the workforce, not to mention functioning significantly below par, and probably staying sicker for longer - that's not in the longer-term interests of any responsible business.
And employees who have been forced to work for a company as part of a workfare scheme, resentful, angry, bitter and frustrated because what they really wanted to do was to have the chance to find a job more appropriate to their skills but which they were not allowed to do on pain of losing all their benefits...does any sensible business really think that they're better off having people like that operating their systems, talking to their customers, or looking after their assets?
This is all short-sightedness of the first water. What a responsible business really needs is happy, motivated employees who feel valued and that their contribution counts for something. People aren't boxes of paperclips or numbers on a spreadsheet - they're real live beings, and pretty much every business needs them at some point in the process.
A welfare state gives people what they need: healthcare that works and helps keep them well and fit to work; a benefits system that means people don't have to live day-to-day in fear that illness or unemployment will immediately plunge them into a whirlpool of debt and misery that they will struggle to escape; and, perhaps most importantly, a safety net to protect employees from the behaviour of abusive or exploitative employers.
I think that most businesses would recognise that to be the case. I think that the businesses we hear most from/about in connection with government policy are not representative of business in general - they are the bloated plutocrats for whom this neo-liberal hegemony has been set up and is being pushed forward, the short-sighted businesses who see staff as just another resource, just another profit centre, and just as disposable as any other bit of inanimate hardware.
The kind of businesses, in short, that are out for what they can get, and are happy to take it and cast it away when it no longer serves their purposes.
The kind of businesses which need to be named and shamed, so that when times change, and it's businesses that are crying out for particular skills, are the ones whom people remember as the betrayers when the boot was on the other foot.
I hope that day comes soon. Meanwhile, I hope they get exactly what's coming to them today - sick employees who make mistakes and spread their bugs, angry employees who sabotage their systems, stressed and distressed employees whose state of mind makes them unpredictable and unreliable. And I hope they pay the price for their greed - today AND into the future.
