What is the likelihood of a fault around the OL contact? You're talking about a very short piece of wire in a panel with the starter. I've never had any problem with the OL contact on the neutral side.
Most of the starters I've used (especially reversing or two speed starters) have a wire routed to one side of the OL contact for you. If you protect the line side of a reversing starter, you need two OL contacts since the hot feeding each coil isn't common. If you just connect the neutral to the other side of the pre-wired contact, it will open either coil when an overload condition exists.
The biggest problem I've seen with motor starters is when the electrican leaves out the OL contact altogether. I recently found six machines with four starters each like that...it had been that way for 8 years before anyone checked the actual wiring! (I wasn't in that department then, so I don't know how it passed checkout.) So, when an overload occurred, the motor could single phase and let the smoke out. They had the neutral connected directly to the coil, instead of the built in common OL contact.
Those Telemechanique starters were internally connected "snap together" units that only had one screw terminal for the OL relay and it was numbered something odd. I can see where an electrician without the manufacturer's info would not know how to wire it. I had to get a new one from the storeroom and look at the instructions to figure it out. The other side of the contact was connected to both coils internally so you couldn't wire it to the line side anyway.
I have found other, common, easy to understand motor starters wired that way too by mistake.
I agree in general with the statement that switching neutral is bad, but this is a wise exception to that rule IMO.
Paul