Retaliatory tactics are all too common. Your life is made miserable within the workplace (if you don’t get fired) and then good luck being hired somewhere else in the same field.
You can be fired after a year without a severance package for no reason.
Where I work now we’re short staffed on pretty much every department and yet we won’t offer higher wages to attract new hires, cause then you’d need to raise the wages of the tenured people as well.
Instead, you squeeze the everloving shit out of whoever stays for the same money as the last 5 years while inflation is still soaring.
People are scared. Most employers will prefer hiring friends and relatives and all their families rather than skilled workers. You do what you can, I know many people living paycheck to paycheck. They just can’t afford to revolt.
Thankfully there are unions that help workers organize, but in many sectors you’re discouraged from joining one.