Graduate students are more like slaves than employees.
I have a theory, a speculation really, but something that tickles my suspicion. The theory is the following: There is a slave trade of Chinese graduate students who are funneled into a meat grinder in which they have to come to America, live in little boxy rooms, dormitories really, work up to 18 hours a day in the lab, get few to no days off, and are paid a pittance, if anything. I suspect this because I am seeing just sooo many of them, and I’ve heard stories of the kind of hours they work. Hey hey for science.
These “slaves” can walk away at any time.
When I was a grad student at Iowa they tried to “organize” us. At that time, appointments were paying $19.38/hr. Not bad for slave labor.