If there were no plumber unions my guess is that you would still make a good living. Unions are pox on the middle class. Nothing personal. If there were to be unions, which I am against, it would be for engineers - not tradesmen.
A lot of today’s engineers and architects need a special union since they are certainly incompetent. What has been coming out of schools as of late is the bottom of the barrel and i see it every day. No responsibility, and no common sense in any manner. They just let the contractors figure out their mistakes.