Fed min wage a dollar short of 1950! -- five dollars short of 1968!

 The trouble with expecting a whole lot of social progress from raising the minimum wage is that the hourly pay cannot be pegged above what the bottom of the barrel union contract would be – above organized labor's weakest bargaining point.

Taking $15 an hour as that bottom peg for argument’s sake, that would meant almost 40% of American workers are earning less than the weakest union contract would yield them.
(http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/who-makes-15-per-hour/ -- 2015)

Check these out:
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.75&year1=195001&year2=202012    .75  8.31
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.60&year1=196802&year2=202012    1.60  12.19

Never mind any bottom of the barrel pact -- 2012’s federal minimum wage is a dollar an hour short of the 1950 federal minimum (!) – and five dollars short of the 1968 (!) -- been something like tripled per capita income since 1950 – doubled since 1968.
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Why can't people just join a union if they want to -- why can't they just vote for certification freely in regularly scheduled elections?
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/