Yeah, this seems silly to me. Judges very rarely reject settlement offers, so if 324.5 million was deemed so low as to reject the settlement, bumping it up a bit to 415 doesn't make much of a difference.
In order for this behavior not to happen again, the outcome needed to have been penalties around 3x what each company "saved" by depressing wages.
So the new amount probably does make a difference.
Second, as you mention, judges very rarely reject settlement offers. That's in no small part because when they do, they are often overruled by appellate courts, and judges hate being overruled. As much as class actions lawsuits look like they create massive principle-agent problems to the rest of us, the federal courts are quite comfortable with them, and they have repeatedly applied the maxim that the law favors settlement in the class context.
If there is to be class action reform it will have to come from Congress (the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 was a tiny step in that direction).
Oh, and have you seen Apple's and Google's quartely revenue reports? This definitely is chump change to them.
I.e. the salary paid to these employees influences the salary expected to be paid to people doing the same at a different company. Especially considering the size and importance of the companies involved. Strangely, I haven't seen this discussed much in articles about this scandal. (of course I say that as someone who did not work at any of the involved companies)
The planet where Google's yearly revenue is over $50bn and Apple is the most valuable company in the world.