Watch AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a live webcast at the Take Back the American Dream conference here at Free Speech TV today at 1:30 EDT.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

At another great Take Back the American Dream conference session this morning, panelists discussed how the nation doesn’t just need millions of new jobs, but it needs jobs that pay well and enable workers to support themselves and their families. 

At ”Make Work Pay: Why Empowering Workers and Holding CEOs Accountable Is Vital to Economic Growth,” Christine Owens, director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), noted that ”we have a net deficit of over 11 million jobs,”

and 75 percent of the jobs that are returning pay between $7.50 and $13.50 an hour.

We are in a very deep hole, and this explains why personal income is falling as well, in the wage and poverty data. Meanwhile corporate CEO pay has exploded.

Raising the minimum wage is essential, Owens said, as is ensuring employers actually pay workers what they are owed. The minimum wage is $7.25 but would be close to $10.50 if it kept up with inflation. Some 26 percent of the workforce makes less than $10.50 an hour. But all wages are anchored by this minimum—called a “spill up effect.” Meanwhile,  a 2008 survey showed one-quarter of low-wage workers had not been paid the minimum wage and three-quarters had not received overtime pay. For low-wage workers, such wage theft accounts for a big chunk of what they need to survive.

Also on the panel, Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO policy director, said CEO pay is supposed to reflect performance, which is supposed to reflect wealth-generation making us all better off. But if you look back to 1964, the apex of performance of the economy, CEO pay relative to regular workers was 24 to 1.  Now it is 340 to 1. 

Silvers said that people once had a pension, health care and a family wage through a single worker. Not anymore. The difference between 1964 and today is diminished unionization of private-sector workers. In 1964, 35 percent of American workers were in unions. Now, it’s about 7 percent. 

If we are going to rebuild the dream that conversation has to run differently. Where workers have a real voice at work and in their communities and in the politics of society. When societies have that wages and productivity move together.

Silvers said countries that have high industrial union densities are more competitive. So how do we change the conversation? he asked. You have to convince workers their future lies in their own hands. In the movie “Modern Ties,” a man can be swallowed by a machine.  Working people in the United States have been swallowed by the machine. The key to empowerment is making people realize they can get out.  Everything a boss does to stop union organizing is to convince people they are powerless. That change has to happen on a national scale. 

Silvers concluded, saying that it is happening in front of us on Wall Street.  Citizens are beginning to get the feeling that, in fact, we can be accountable.  Every day a few more people figure this out.