Anyway, this practice should be criminalized with companies and their employees receiving criminal penalties like jail time.
And legitimising this is appropriate. The only other position -- requiring people to behave in a way that doesn't meet their basic needs for survival -- would be inappropriate. It is the responsibility of those in power to prevent society from degrading to a point where police are forced to be violent in order to keep their jobs.
If you study game theory such as the prisoner's dilemma, you'll understand that these are perverse incentives where actors are certainly "rational" given their constraints, but the overall system is harmed. In a feedback loop such as society, this can have a runaway effect until eventual societal collapse.
> legitimising this is appropriate
For who? Who decides this?
> It is the responsibility of those in power to prevent society from degrading to a point where police are forced to be violent in order to keep their jobs.
Maybe you now understand why this is circular logic. If those in power are just doing what they "have to do" in order to keep their job and survive, and civilians do what they "have to do", and police do what they "have to do", the buck gets passed to no one. Every single culpable party gets to say it's not their fault or their responsibility to introduce structural change through personal sacrifice.
CEOs, CTOs, etc. of organizations with the budged of small countries can be stupid, unknowledgeable and reckless and there are no consequences (unless it affects shareholders money). Executives should be held legally accountable of the damage that their companies do.
Accountability is required for a civilized society. When the people with the most power do not need to follow any rule we get into anarchy and chaos. Just watch the news to see that it is already happening.
Besides, one reason why they can be coerced is because these actions aren't clearly illegal. If they are, the employee can just report what they're being asked to do to the police. Workplace safety has been dramatically improved in western countries simply by making many unsafe practices illegal and creating entities to report illegal work to. While this did require criminal charges for some managers and employees, because safety has improved so much, they're really not that common.
I remember when I had workplace safety training as a poorly paid university lab monitor. They made clear that I had potential criminal legal liability if I allowed egregiously unsafe things to happen. So they didn't.