We need not just jobs, but jobs that pay (by: Barbara Ehrenreich)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/16/ehrenreich.jobs.unions/

President Barack Obama promised -- just three years ago when he was in general a more promising sort of fellow -- that he would raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. Maybe he forgot, just as he forgot his promise to press for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for workers to organize.

That's been the sad trajectory of the American middle-class spirit from the late '70s to the present day: We've gone from Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It" to begging the sleek-suited "job creators" for whatever they can throw our way.

Even the most isolated and "invisible" workers -- nannies and maids -- are organizing themselves into a National Domestic Workers Alliance. As anyone in these groups could tell you: We don't just need more jobs, we need more jobs that treat employees like humans and pay what you could actually live on.