Labour rights are not the solution to PhD exploitation

The apprenticeship analogy is completely misplaced. Why didn't the author do any research on the history and meanings of apprenticeship? PhD training NEVER actually resembled "apprenticeship"

If PhD research is a type of apprenticeship, students should be given pension rights like apprentices. This would require a substantial increase in the stipend so that they can afford the contributions.

I think the major flaw in this argument is the focus on teaching - the whole package is broken. PGRS form the core of many research labs/teams. They often do exploratory projects on the edge of the labs main work. They can be key fieldworkers for environmental, ecological and bio-science work. They help create research (and REF) environment. They may also be key to lab demonstration, teaching as noted in the above article and those it references, and also therefore points of educational and wellbeing contact for UG and PG students. All while doing a pressured pass/fail assessment with no clean valued 'out points' along the way, as well as training and now likely placement and employability activity. Yet in most universities, they are treated not quite as staff nor quite as students and often fall between these roles is detrimental ways (e.g. maternity leave). All of this (if they are on funding) at or below minimum wage. The big story is the whole system needs replacing. A structured "academic apprenticeship" is the answer with a reasonable grant/pay, including 'learning to teach' among other things, with clear out points (MA/MSc, MRes, Mphil, PhD). The whole system currently lets down PGRS.

While offering an intellectual critique of treating the PhD as a job, the article seems to present an ideal type of PhD where students get to further and develop their academic self which seems rather removed from the grim reality of how things are. As some one else has commented the system is broken, and it's hard to see how a paid/ employment based relationship would be worse than the status quo.