Toxic work culture also means dishonest management expectations, wage theft, and generally anti-employee policies.
For example, around 2-3 years ago I heard a fun story about why my old employer lost 3/4 of their IT team(MSP, their product was IT folks). The straw that broke the camel’s back was a management partner asking an employee “are you letting your family get in the way of your job?” This was because they couldn’t get this person to work overtime on the spot because they weren’t going to leave their kid’s sports game.
At that same employer, about 7 years ago, I was told I would have to start my day at the customer’s job site at or before 8AM, and I wouldn’t be compensated for my travel time because “everyone has a commute, buddy”. Problem was, my customers were often over an hour away, and they were going to bill the customer for my travel time anyway.
There’s certainly still toxic work cultures, and while I am glad you seemingly haven’t had to experience it as much recently, you shouldn’t discount other’s struggles just because you aren’t experiencing the same thing.
If they were regulated as a common carrier, wouldn’t this be a non issue for them? Shame they fought that so hard, it seems like it would have saved them some money.