I agree, and the fallacy in the parent's argument is that they're only looking at one aspect of the leverage side of unions: strikes. But the thing is, all org

I agree, and the fallacy in the parent's argument is that they're only looking at one aspect of the leverage side of unions: strikes. But the thing is, all organizations should be unionized. Meaning that all employees should always have group voting power to prevent malfeasance against any single employee. Critiques of this common decency mainly come in the form of whataboutism, fear and othering (our wealthy investors might find different non-union suckers, mob-union rule could take away some of our obscene power, what if the workers who make us our money get even lazier?) The extent of union power is debatable, so maybe it makes sense for workers at a car company to go on strike because stopping production is unthinkable by the owners (capitalists), or maybe teachers should walk off the job because students should stay in school. But researchers walking out would have delayed consequences that might not be seen for half a decade. So the union power for researchers is not in strikes, but that it moves individual responsibility to the group, which has actual power to effect change. If congress isn't funding the NIH properly, then the union can advocate for its members like a lobbyist and say "hey, if you don't raise our funding, we'll put ads on TV criticizing the committee and individuals cutting our funding. We won't endorse work coming our of the private corporations trying to defund us. We'll challenge pork barrel funding that's been diverted from us in court. We'll.. quiet quit.."