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Sure, assume that sex is the worst thing in the world that any employer will ask you to do, and forbid any employee to consent to it for various moral reasons. I get all that. It doesn't change the factual question of consent and agency. "You're not allowed to consent to that" is different from "you didn't consent to that."
A good comparison would be minors. We traditionally don't allow minors to consent to sex, or to sign contracts to which they will be bound, outside of certain exceptions. We feel that minors don't have the power to consent to those things. I'm trying to get a proper explanation of women's power of consent in an employment context.
It pretty much is, because some employers are very motivated to ask for it and most employees value very very highly not having to give it. Humans are like that. There's nothing comparable except maybe for some extreme forms of dangerous working conditions.
A definition of consent that captures what most people mean by "consent" excludes cases where failing to "consent" results in a high cost imposed by the party asking for consent. You can try to claim that nobody owes you a job, so the employer hasn't imposed a cost by firing you., but if the job isn't sexual and the demand for sex is suddenly sprung up, the employer has committed fraud. Not committing fraud and not imposing costs through fraud is something the employer owes the employee.
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