WI Trade Unions were organised more like Professional Associations?
What I am essentially saying is what if in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rather than fighting for the right to represent workers on issues of wages and conditions, trade unions instead sought to shore up the position of their members by instead controlling entry into the occupations they represented. Of course early craft unions did pursue such policies but they were overtaken by the form of trade unionism were are more familiar with now.
Whilst the most unskilled jobs might be hard to organise along these lines, most occupations, even low-paid ones involve some form of skill that can be measured and tested for, so I think this ATL is plausible.
The thing which gave me the idea of this is that I was reading about how teachers in the UK would most likely have formed professional associations rather than trade unions if only they have formed a sense of collective identity prior to public education (ie doctors formed their medical associatons long before public healthcare). Once the government was involved, the government did not like the idea of the teachers self-regulating entry into the profession.
How would the economy (and being an Australian I am thinking here of primarily the English-speaking economies, but you can include others as well if you want) be different if all trade unions had become professional associations. Obviously there would be no or few strikes, as supply would be fine-tuned to never exceed demand. This would lessen workplace disruption. On the other hand other inefficiences would creep in. Would the fact that these professional associations (even for blue-collar industrial jobs) wouldn't strike lead to them being viewed more favourable among the middle class than trade unions were in OTL?
Also if this were to occur I think at least in Britain politics would develop rather differently to OTL. These professional associations would have I assume a much different ethos than the trade unions so the British Labour Party would be different or perhaps butterflied away entirely. How would the major political faultlines develop in such a society?