Hi all, my friend is doing a research assistant position in Econ. His boss is very pushy and abusive to the point he broke down initially. Everyone around her does not want to work around her as she keeps asking for tasks that normally takes 3 days to be done in 1 and dismisses others’ feeling and when they try to be realistic with her. She does not care how long the work needs to be done it just has to be. There is no time off no holidays and he just works everyday for these research projects. Today he was told that she did not notice he has been logging in his overtime hours and he is being paid three times his normal wage. That is the amount of work she requests and he was fine with doing it since he was being paid. She would gaslight him by talking shit about others and say how important he is and he would get a bonus. It seems like she is requesting to be paid overtime back so 100+ hours per week needs to be paid back and he will just be paid a salary of 50k for working day and night 7X a week remotely. He says he can’t talk to HR since they have to write him a recommendation letter and they are figures in the field he wants to do. Having been in academia I have gone through similar things but I just did it for a year and avoided that boss like the plague. I feel for him and not sure what can be done as I feel a lot of this is pushed under the rug. They are prominent figures in economic policy and analysis. It is a really bad situation as they know he is not a citizen and she would act like a mentor to teach him but it felt like brainwashing to be her peasant. It’s really horrible as the boss of his boss is the same. How do we prevent this is academia as they is a power indifference many people knowingly take advantage of?