And to be clear, we are well beyond "asshole boss" or anything legal in the western world. We are considering a situation where you are treated identically to a slave except that instead of being forced to work via beatings and supplied food, you are supplied just enough money to eat - buying everything at the company store - and forced to work by "well otherwise you starve to death".

(By food I also include things like shelter and so on...)

There are people in the world who are functionally chattel slaves who happen to receive a nominal wage, but this is not what the term “wage slavery” typically refers to; that term (and perhaps your argument, though I am not sure) equivocates wage labor with chattel slavery. I and others believe the difference is vast, important, and moral.

That's why such work is a good thing, not a bad thing. It saves people from starving to death. Which is what happens periodically during famines in extremely undeveloped countries, such as most of history.