Honestly I've seen "mom and pop shops can't afford it" used to argue against basic human decency like paid sick leave, paid parental leave, mandatory employer-provided health insurance, etc. so many times to the point where I'm now actively biased against mom and pop shops.
A much larger proportion of companies that behave in abusive ways towards their employees are small businesses as opposed to large companies.
Aside from all of the above, small business owners are far more likely to act like they're doing their employees a huge favor by hiring them than managers at big companies. One small company I worked at was particularly abusive: we were all making 2/3 of what we would've been making at other companies, we had no health insurance (which got me financially destroyed on my taxes), no vacation days, I had to beg my boss to give me a day off if some emergency came up and I had to take off (which he'd only give me half the time), my boss yelled so much at myself and my coworkers that at any large company he would've been frog-marched into HR's office and sent packing (or rather, large companies would vet their managerial candidates so they'd never hire someone like him in the first place), we worked in an absolute shithole of an office building where things went wrong constantly, the building manager didn't give a shit, and actively treated us like garbage when we complained, and the company's leaders just rolled over and took it because they didn't have any other option (we were literally the very first tenant in an office building that had just been renovated after being closed for a decade and got a massive discount on rent because of it; we couldn't afford offices anyplace else). Every other company I've worked for has been larger than them and never pulled any of this shit. I'll never work for a small business ever again; in fact, I currently work for a megacorp and love it.
A much larger proportion of companies that behave in abusive ways towards their employees are small businesses as opposed to large companies.
Aside from all of the above, small business owners are far more likely to act like they're doing their employees a huge favor by hiring them than managers at big companies. One small company I worked at was particularly abusive: we were all making 2/3 of what we would've been making at other companies, we had no health insurance (which got me financially destroyed on my taxes), no vacation days, I had to beg my boss to give me a day off if some emergency came up and I had to take off (which he'd only give me half the time), my boss yelled so much at myself and my coworkers that at any large company he would've been frog-marched into HR's office and sent packing (or rather, large companies would vet their managerial candidates so they'd never hire someone like him in the first place), we worked in an absolute shithole of an office building where things went wrong constantly, the building manager didn't give a shit, and actively treated us like garbage when we complained, and the company's leaders just rolled over and took it because they didn't have any other option (we were literally the very first tenant in an office building that had just been renovated after being closed for a decade and got a massive discount on rent because of it; we couldn't afford offices anyplace else). Every other company I've worked for has been larger than them and never pulled any of this shit. I'll never work for a small business ever again; in fact, I currently work for a megacorp and love it.