Asked the young lady cashier if she votes

[haele]

12. If minimum wage goes up, the floor of other wages will, also.

That's pretty much a given.
Problem is that sometimes in the mid '80's, the unions pretty much unanimously and unwisely agreed to lowering the floor for new hires in return for "better benefits". Within a decade that turned into wage stagnation up and down the employee sector, not only in union jobs and "lower level" professional and technical jobs. It didn't help that the federal government pegged it's labor costs to match the private sector, which led to a vicious circle as employees found they couldn't demand higher wages based on competition between public and private wages - only benefits.

In 1989, a union shipyard journeyman welder started at $18 an hour, electricians at $15. In 2009, it was $21/$17 an hour.
Keeping up with minimum wage. Didn't matter that technologies, training, and standards had changed, or if their responsibilities had increased - there was little push or incentive for the employers to raise wages.

Even consultants faced stagnation, though much of that had to do with gluts of graduates in technical fields - when a software or computer network consultant could negotiate $150 to $300 an hour to come in and "fix" a corporation's problem in 1990, now they're looking at $75 to $150 an hour, plus a nominal "service fee" to come out.

If minimum wage doesn't rise, there's nothing to bargain against. And businesses that don't look after or value their employees enough to pay legitimate compensation for the profit they get off employee labor are not going to be motivated to keep wages in line with both inflation and profits.

Haele