The high unemployment rates are mostly a direct result of the financial crash (ironically, itself caused by not enough regulation) and resulting austerity measures and cuts to services.

They have very little to do with worker protections. If they did it would have been like this for a long time before 2008. They weren't.

It's not a zero-sum game where the only way you keep unemployment low is by going full USA and stripping workers of any kind of protection at all.