> When the capitalist class colludes to push down wages, make working conditions worse, and do mass layoffs when the company is so profitable that they have so much money they don't even know what to do with it and are therefore buying back stock, are there any laws that protect workers?
Yes, the laws don't magically vanish. Also, you seem to be neglecting inflation in those numbers, which is the main reason things have gone out of whack economically.
The fact is you can have bigger numbers and less real wealth. There is greed causing that, but mostly from the political class who printed a ton of paper even though there isn't more stuff to actually buy with that paper.
It's ironic that the stock buybacks work like the inverse of this, showing that they understand the effect of printing too much, even if they're dick moves by people who are compensated mostly in stock.
But you can't really call this out without calling out our government robbing us by printing more paper in a regressive stealth tax, which is what started this whole mess. No, Putin didn't do us any favors with his bloodthirsty war, but he poured gas on a fire that was already burning strongly well before then.
> Are the laws you're citing currently good, do you agree with them?
All of them? No. But the ones keeping me from being stuck working for company scrip are pretty good.
> Is there a lawsuit that someone that isn't from a protected class can pursue to get a raise? Work less hours? Have enough coverage in a role that an employee can take holidays and vacation time? Have a consistent schedule?
You have to become more valuable for that, then you have more options. You know, invest into your own human capital. If you don't produce things that other people actually want, why should you be entitled to the things that they produce?
The thinking in this article just leads you down a downward spiral where everybody loses, when the economy is a positive sum game where we're constantly making new things that people want. If you want more of the pie, you have to start baking.
I say this as someone who has worked a crappy ass factory job. I can see why the lower end of jobs makes people feel this way, since I spent years in an awful factory working myself half to death, not feeling like I could even get vacation and not having any kind of stable schedule at all, given that I'd drive for two hours to work for 1d20 hours, not even knowing how many ahead of time.
Now I work at a place where my whole job is helping people, we work a stable schedule, and things are good. When I just naively asked for a "market" salary, they quoted a figure that was $20k higher than I expected.
And I did it by making myself more valuable, spending all the time I could get making some projects to show what I knew and finding places that valued that.
But if you follow this advice, you'll find yourself in a race to the bottom.