You're thinking of self-regulating professional body rather than a trade union. Unions fight for pay and working conditions against employers, professional bodies represent the considered opinion of the profession and self-regulate their members, like doctors and barristers.
Nah both are the same. Both are professional associations represent their members (the description of a union). How they go about that depends on the union/whatever you want to call it.
Professional associations are from different from unions. The stated reason for the existence of a professional association is the protection of the public. Unions, on the other hand, exist for the benefit of their members.
You don't call it a union, silly. A union is for socialists.
You call it a Professional Association. The same way doctors and accountants do. It's essentially the same as a union, but it's for rich, conservative people.
Historically, professions = Upper/Ruling Classes. Members of the ruling class don't (at least historically want/need) form unions precisely because they are/were the ruling class. [Edit: Professional Associations i believe were fairly common, as a vehicle to further the interests of a specific profession.]
It's funny, I had a similar thought while I was in the shower earlier today. I observed that while we _don't_ have anything resembling a trade union, I've never personally felt the need for it.
On the other hand, isn't it the case that while trades have unions, professions have professional associations? Just as doctors, lawyers and accountants do, so do we: the IEEE and ACM come most readily to mind.
Doctors have a guild: the AMA. Lawyers have a guild: the ABA. Neither are the same things as unions but they have similar effects. The ABA and AMA also have large roles in professional education. Both also have major roles in accreditation and regulation of the profession. Unlike unions, they do not collectively bargain on behalf of individual workers. They aren't subject to the many regulations associated with organized labor.
They also enjoy broad exemptions to antitrust law which would otherwise apply. It's why other classes of worker cannot have the same type of protective guild -- it's legal when the ABA or AMA do it and illegal when someone else does it.
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