Actually, it brought unprecedented power to the workers, balancing the power between employer/employee significantly.
It certainly was a tough period (hardly alone in that respect!), but the romanticised images of starving children chained by ankles in sweltering mines, whereas they had happily capered about their sunny villages all day long prior to the revolution, are way off [0].
If you restrict your survey of the condition of the working class to those who have published autobiographies and memoirs, you will have a distorted view of the condition of most workers during the period.
If you're referring to the linked article: it's true I haven't read her books, but I hope that a leading UK scholarly expert on the industrial revolution would have taken your point into account!
It certainly was a tough period (hardly alone in that respect!), but the romanticised images of starving children chained by ankles in sweltering mines, whereas they had happily capered about their sunny villages all day long prior to the revolution, are way off [0].
[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-19/why-workers-welcome...