Sick pay, maternity leave, annual leave, contracts, compassionate leave, pay if you're injured on the job, rights if you've worked somewhere longer than two years....
It's as if you think none of that existed in the eighties - just to clarify, I am talking about the 1980s, not the 1880s! It's true as the pp says that there was a lot of sexism in the workplace back in the day, although as far as I can see there's plenty of that still - it's less than five years since the case where someone was sacked for not wearing high heels and makeup for a receptionist job, for example. What we certainly do have now is a wholesale erosion of workers' rights, for example a rolling back of unfair and constructive dismissal legislation, increased probation and notice periods, widespread deunionisation, and of course the rise of the zero hours contract. Additionally, technology enables surveillance and audit of employee activity like never before.
This is why couriers sling parcels on to your doorstep hours after the tracking said they had already been delivered, for instance, because they're expected to complete an insane amount of work in an unrealistic time frame, but if they don't (pretend to) meet closely scrutinised microtargets they don't get paid. If they're off sick they don't get paid. If they go on holiday they don't get paid. If there's no work for them because, say, flights are grounded, as in the first lockdown, and parcels are stuck in transit, they don't get paid - that's what zero hours means. This is how millions of employees in the UK are treated. As a pp mentioned, all these types of mcjobs - call centres, supermarkets, mail order fulfilment, etc - expect to keep tabs on how long you spend in the loo. Packers in mail order warehouses are expected to strip off and change into overalls in CCTV surveilled changing rooms to minimise theft ffs. Let's not even get into agricultural jobs, cleaning jobs, catering and hospitality jobs. All of this for minimum wage or less.
If this is your idea of progress, you have Stockholm syndrome. More likely, you just have no idea about employment conditions beyond your own little sector.
Anyway, as I said before, none of this helps the OP, who imo has been shoddily treated by the employer in question, however reasonable and responsible you may think their actions.
I hope your current crop of applications bears fruit, OP. I'm going to leave your thread now as I feel my contributions are just enabling others to derail it, sorry.