and if they try to make things miserable, they’ll lose a lot of talented staff.

This is what a lot of workplaces are finding out: you can squeeze staff, but you'll end up with a retention problem and you'll have a shallower pool of talent to draw from.

My local paper referred to the anti-lockdown protests as "a revolt of the bosses" and I don't think they were wrong: COVID struck fear into the capitalist class not just because of the loss of income, but because, after decades of having it all their own way--to the point where they were getting resentful of customers not spending enough money!--business-owners were rudely reminded that they needed labour to both make their goods and services, and buy their shit.

They desperately want the late-2010s back, when money was cheap and the poors had to fight for a job.