You now need to spend an undefined amount of time looking for a new job.
You need to find that new job soon, because your old job was tied to important things like health insurance, without which any accident could bankrupt you.
It was also tied to less important benefits like vacation time and seniority, which reset at youe new job. Previously had 3 weeks off available after working for years at the same shop? Back to 6 days. At some places it may also be tied to a car, computer, or phone plan which you have come to depend on.
Not to mention that getting fired is a black mark on your ability to get a new job in the future.
Employers like to structure things such that they can replace an employee with little impact. They have people whose job it is to manage that process. To an employee, even an unusually well prepared one with savings and a plan and a current resume, losing one's job is a catastrophic event that can only be easily withstood a handful of times in a career.
There are many other things and employer can do, such as the aforementioned non-compete "agreements", changing pension and other retirement benefits (threatening to take them away as pressure), colluding with other employers to keep your wages down (https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f578d157-2b2a...), and more.
By your way of thinking, any business is a government.
I've never heard that definition of government. Also, at least in the US (and presumably everywhere else), private citizens have the right to use force under various circumstances.
> private citizens have the right to use force under various circumstances.
Yup, as defined by the government. You can defend yourself in certain circumstances, but you are always subservient to the military and police. They are the ultimate power in the state. If there was a force stronger than the military or police, that power would then be the state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)
It is probably the most common definition. As per this definition, the citizens can use force because the state grants them that right.
Can you start a private army to compete (not meaning fight it, but to provide the same services) with the state's army ?
If you have to pay for it (you actually pay for the army to force you to pay for it...), and you can't compete with it for the services it provides, it's not only a monopoly, it's also a tyranny.
Governments by definition have a monopoly on force. A government is a government because people with guns say so.
You might want to argue that employees have power, but they are nothing like a government. They don't have force, they don't have jails, they can't enter your home and give you orders. The worst thing an employer can do is to stop employing you. That's hardly coercion IMO.