money and power for meee, not for theeee

It’s not strange at all if you understand the differences between a private sector union and a public sector one. What’s really strange is how anyone that’s not a member of a public sector union could think it’s a net benefit for society as whole.

You could argue many things are a "net benefit to society" but which are untenable for moral, political, or practical reasons. In this case, however, I think you have to exclude government employees to from society to consider this a "net benefit" instead of a zero-sum benefit.

When you hear stories from controllers both in the US and other nations about the constant pressure to cut corners and operate with fewer people I think you do need an organization to advocate for them.

Look at that midair in Europe (euro control) where one overnight controller was managing a giant chunk of airspace and was task saturated. Then afterwards all this scandal on how the contracting facility was cooking the books around staffing levels to look like things were on the up and up.