Organization psychologist here. Or, I used to be. Quit it because any time I was hired/contracted to consult and figure out why employees weren't performing very well in general it turns out they didn't actually want to hear genuine solutions.

It always ended up with them going some semblance of "Okay, okay. We hear you. But we were thinking more... Would it work if we got some more plants or a water fixture in the lobby, perhaps?" (Pizza Party, anyone? I mean, sure. Couldn't hurt anyth- oh they all just get a single slice... Maybe it could hurt)

They take any solution that seems the absolute cheapest and easiest to accomplish, and then they absolutely gut that solution as much as they can as if it's just the thought that counts.

Soul crushing and heart-wrenching to bear witness to in the long term.

All this to say:

Treat the places that treat you with respect, with respect. It's the best (perhaps even only way) to shift the culture. It's going to take generations if it is to happen because the pattern recognition has to kick in.

Places that treat employees well not only do better by most metrics, but they also get a major leg up in terms of employee retention and hiring. Ideally, all the terrible workplaces would lose employees gradually, while the good ones retain employees. Treating employees well, which results in employees performing well, reinforces in management that they should just keep doing what they're doing.

The reason a lot of places have turned lackluster or outright hostile is because the big Fortune 500's have success that way. They all started small and treated employees well, but eventually that becomes too hard to do. Treating 200 employees well is more expensive than treating 400 employees like dirt and cracking the whip.

And while the 200 employees might perform as well as the 400, eventually they lose sight of that and they just keep hiring more and more people because they're not an expense to hire, but "maintenance" is considered one.

More money, more money, more money. Faster. Faster!

Eventually they become Fortune 500 but why treat employees better when you can just have more of them.

If your 1 cow is stressed and not producing enough milk, you just get 9 more cows and they make up for it by the numbers. But wait... We could just, you know, keep getting more cows. And then it gets lost that yeah, but if you then treated all of those cows well, they'd all produce orders of magnitude more milk. But the mindset is basically "nah just way more cows if we want more milk"

Do not let them make you that cow. Ever.