This is why I don't really care about the surplus value of your labor nonsense. It quickly becomes extremely abstract and stupid.

Its much more easily and realistically described as a problem of the people who own the means having a disproportionate amount of power, and this situation leading to the decisions made by society usually benefiting the people who own the means at the expense of everyone else. When it's not directly at the expense of everyone else, it's indirectly in the sense that extra profits from good fortune only going to the people who own things.

And it's not just a disproportionate amount of power in the sense they get first dibs on everything, it's stacked to the point what they want is almost the only thing that matters at all. At best the worker gets to not suffer quite as much as the bosses originally intended, the worker never gets anything extra. If the boss wants to be nice, he can be. But if he wants to be cruel, nothing will stop him.

This way of phrasing it works a lot better on people in my experience. It's more direct, as you can point to specific examples of things happening it's much harder to refute with abstraction.