Here’s a whole thread about the many ways that salaried employees of all types are routinely made to work 50 or 60 or 100 hours for zero additional wages over 40. You have two choices: do the extra time or be fired. When your whole industry operates on that basis, you may be able to change employers, but you can’t escape the exploitative reality of the industry.
This OP is ostensibly about the limit case bad deals, but plenty of more ordinary jobs work the same way. Making, say, $60K+ in any office doing anything and being allowed to work only 40 hours doing so is a very rare treat. White collar slaves is more like it.
High wage hourly workers such as you and I are by far a rarity in the USA. In my industry the vast majority of overtime is paid but only at straight time rates.