A gain for unions might be a gain for non union if we’re talking comparable industries, like union electricians or plumbers. Those are industries where people can leave their non union employer and go union, or work to unionize their employer.

For general office work that’s not the case. Government administration positions don’t all have non union equivalents. Office workers don’t generally unionize. You can’t just quit your non union job and get a government job, those are hard to come by. So a gain for government service workers is irrelevant to the general public, or in the case of increased wages just means increased taxes. There’s a sense of jealousy of those with government positions, as well as schadenfreude when they get screwed over.

Passport applications that were processed by people that were working from the office and by teams that has been cut to the minimum number of employees possible by shipping people to other departments that were actually necessary during the peak of the pandemic!