I agree that there should definitely be safety regulations in place for ship recycling, but this guy is building a strawman argument and it really undermines his point in my view.
I agree, machines do tons of dangerous and hard work people used to. Farm labor is the greatest example, it used to be backbreaking work for dozens of men and animals and now it's one guy with a tractor or combine.
That we haven't automated ALL hard work before we started on art isn't a great argument IMO