This adversarial mindset isn't conducive to good governance.

Of course public employee unions have conflicting interests with taxpayers in general. But that's not a bad thing, unless you subscribe to the peabrained 'everyone is ripping us off mentality' of some professional whiners and presidents. There is this image deliberately created of federal government employees who show up for work and collect a huge check for doing nothing except resting their feet on the desk all day, but I don't see any basis for believing this.

In reality, it makes a lot of sense for government employees to communicate information upward about safety and working conditions, not least because managers (many of whom are political appointees) have their own career interests and those too are not always aligned with taxpayers. It's weird to me that people demonize the bottom tier employees while turning a blind eye to the economic incentives for the managerial and secretarial class in government. Look at the recently departed secretary of Homeland Security, who racked up hundreds of millions of questionable expenses.