CORAOPOLIS, Pennsylvania — Ed Bigley, the business manager for the Pittsburgh Plumbers Union Local 27, says the organization has been serving the region since the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 1870s, when it came under the umbrella of the Knights of Labor.

By July of 1890, it had formed its own stand-alone union, even holding its first convention in the city, with the Pittsburgh Post reporting the event had a “sumptuous banquet” for the visiting delegates of plumbers from across the country as the 100 members of the new union marched into the room “to the pleasing strains of the Royal Italian orchestra.”