I guess it depends on what kind of engineering you're doing. The old way is for an engineer to have come from the practical and empirical ranks, but that's no longer the case in many disciplines. For example, electrical engineering. The new way is for engineers to work in a division of labor rather than a jack of all trades capacity. Good chip designers do their work, and industrial process engineers figure out how to turn it into a factory process, and that factory process determines what the laborers will do. The chip designers will never likely even meet a factory laborer except on a tour of some kind.
Likewise with civil engineering, with building specialists, water specialists, and soil specialists. A lot of engineers will never have contact with a "laborer". What has happened is that engineers ARE laborers, doing their part in large and complex projects.
The only modern example of an old fashioned engineer that still makes sense is the factory millwright, who is a broadly skilled and very valuable person who often has a formal engineering background, but is also very hands-on.
As for getting rid of union bad apples, the common practice is to not focus on getting rid of individuals, but to replace the union with a more competitive labor force. That's been working very well for both labor and business lately.
