Comparing factory workers anywhere to grad students in California is remarkable. Grad students endure the conditions voluntarily. They would have tons of alternative options in the private sector if they chose to do that.
The difference of extremity does not make comparison unreasonable.
Exploitation of workers is at the core of both circumstances. Downplaying/ignoring one set of circumstances because it is lesser on the scale of abuse is the more remarkable point of view, in my opinion.
Perhaps grad student workers should just struggle in silence, due to the difference in their circumstances with other workers. Or perhaps all workers should band together in solidarity due to the commonality of their circumstances.
No, they should just quit if they don’t like it. The reason they don’t is that they are getting extra compensation in the form of status and credential they are working towards, or legal immigration status for many foreign students. It is silly to ignore these and focus exclusively on financial compensation.
As a thought experiment: imagine that these grad students were offered a deal, where their pay is doubled, their job responsibilities are unchanged, but they are removed from the students roll, no longer can qualify for PhD degree (though they can still and in fact are expected to publish just as much as before), and their job title is now “lab technician” instead of “graduate students”. How many of them do you think would have taken the deal? My belief is that basically none of them would consider double the pay to be worth it.
So your position is that they should quit instead of negotiate for better conditions? Who is that better for and why? You don't provide any argument for why that's a better course of action for anybody.
As somebody who benefits, indirectly, from their work, since their work benefits all of society, I'm much happier with them improving the working conditions and continuing to work, rather than quitting and losing that investment in their specialized knowledge.
No, my position is that their situation is not so terrible as claimed by the people who compare the grad students to low paid workers in retail or manufacturing. They are compensated highly in non-financial terms.
More importantly, the main reason people negotiate with one another is that they hope to achieve better outcomes than they can with either a default of no action, or unilateral actions. Imagine that the grad students sit down to the negotiating table with the people determining they pay. They ask for higher pay, and the other side says straight up “no”, and offers no concession whatsoever. What then? At this point, the only option available to the students is threatening some form of quitting, as they don’t really have any other means of leverage.
The point here is that even if they do negotiate, they must be ready and willing to quit if they want these negotiations to go their way, and if they aren’t (and they very much aren’t, as people who are willing to quit grad school simply do exactly that), they’ll keep making a pittance in terms of cash benefits.
They have skin in the game in terms of their education. Walking away will impact references as well.
The nihilist attitude towards human decency at work in the tech industry is so gross. As someone outside looking in, as tech plateaus and consolidates, it will be amusing to observe this flip. All of the former FAANG people will be crying the same way the IBM, DEC, HP hotshots of yesteryear did.
The circumstances have little in common. Grad students are cognitive elites who put up with poor working conditions on a temporary basis en route to high status positions. They are like medical residents or overworked junior professionals in law, banking, journalism, media, etc.
You can’t have meaningful solidarity between people who aren’t similarly situated, and who have differing incentives.
I think graduate students are aspiring members of the petit bourgeoise, and typically are going to come from such families anyway, and shouldn’t dilute real workers’ movements with their quite distinct interests.
So, workers' movements don't benefit from their members going to graduate school?
Perhaps you have identified graduate school students as aspiring members of the petit bourgeoise because only individuals with such aspirations would rationally pay for graduate school in today's system.
I don't think anyone is discounting the problem -- but they are reacting to the scale. Its like you jumped onto a story about a child stepping on a landmine to complain about your paper cut.
Defending paying people less than a living wage is remarkable. There are an endless number of contrarian positions to take, but 'scientists shouldn't protest being paid too little to live on' takes the cake. Incidentally having worked both in a factory role and as a graduate student - the former was significantly better paid.
There may be issues on both fronts but yeah, scale does matter -- there is a difference between someone that is basically an indentured (and locked up at night) servant and a grad student that is doing research that is not making comfortable wage in a high COL area.
My friend just got a job as a delivery truck driver here in WA. Works 4 days a week, from 4 AM to 2 PM, and makes north of $100k. He tells me that the trucking companies are hiring like crazy. Do you think this is beyond the abilities of grad students?
Just to clarify, your position is that, without "corroborated" proof to the contrary, you doubt that there are 5 jobs that a graduate student can get with better pay and conditions than a worker in one of these factories?
Exploitation of workers is at the core of both circumstances. Downplaying/ignoring one set of circumstances because it is lesser on the scale of abuse is the more remarkable point of view, in my opinion.