A newspaper article on Britain's unions argued that their strength was declining.
Conclusion (implied)
The union's strength was declining.
Evidence
People think that the union's strength is declining because of fewer strikes, but strikes are actually a sign that a union's position is too weak in a modern society.
When a union is strong, they don't need to call strikes. They can concentrate on working with others in the labor market to achieve common goals, like more profitable and livable working conditions.
Evaluate
If we were looking for an explicit conclusion here, we might torture ourselves, but the question stem indicates that we're talking about an implied conclusion.
The argument criticizing the newspaper article is directed toward establishing which one of the following as its main conclusion?
The most common place to find an implied conclusion is with a rebuttal argument. When an author starts off with an attribution and then pivots with a but / yet / however, then we can pretty safely assume that the conclusion will just sound like it's disagreeing with the original attribution claim.
for example Many people think that Ringo was a very mediocre drummer. However, Ringo's left handedness led to him playing a lot of unusual drum fills that delighted his contemporaries.
The implied conclusion was, "Ringo was not a very mediocre drummer".
Similarly, we find our implied conclusion here by noticing the attribution that begins the paragraph: an article argued that the strength of unions was declining.
Does our author agree/disagree with that position? Where is the first clue?
When she says,
The "as if" is a sarcastic comment, showing us that the author takes issue with the article's logic. From there, we can here that the author is building the opposite case, that a lack of strikes is actually an indication of the opposite conclusion, that the strength of unions is not declining.
Goal
Let's look for something like .