From the Arab uprisings to the international recognition of the rights of domestic workers, 2011 was a turning point for millions of workers around the globe. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, whose mission is to support workers in building independent trade unions around the world, partnered with workers and their unions as they organized for better working conditions, greater social protections, more fair labor laws and increased democracy and equity in their countries.

In its just-released 2011 Annual Report, the Solidarity Center shows how its staff in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas partnered with workers and their unions organizing for better working conditions and for the fundamental rights denied to them.

Here are a few highlights.

If you're a progressive activist seeking to make economic change, delving into the role of "derivatives" or other arcane discussions likely results in blank stares. Which is why Erica Payne, founder of the Agenda Project says that progressives need to cut through the right-wing noise and talk about what's really happening to the U.S. economy. For Payne, explaining  the recession isn't complicated: "A bunch of rich privileged guys stole our money."

More than 400 immigrants, many of them domestic workers, rallied in Sacramento yesterday for workers’ rights and other important issues to mark California’s 16th annual Immigration Day.

The 45,000 taxi cabs in New York City have been described as the seventh-largest transportation system in the United States—and at the AFL-CIO Innovators webpage, writer Robert Struckman notes:

If you ask a driver, there’s a good chance he or she will tell you, "I’m a member of the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA)."

Ai-jen Poo director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), and Dulce Matuz, president of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition, have been named to the 2012 Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In a dramatic way not seen in years, today’s celebration of International Human Rights Day arrives during enormous and popular ongoing struggles.

A new report shows how wage theft reaches deep into the low-wage economy.

“The Movement to End Wage Theft” illustrates the problem with the stories of workers employed by a grocery chain, a temp agency, a construction company and other incorporated businesses. These workers’ wages were stolen by their employers who failed to pay the minimum wage or overtime, or refused to abide by work-break and safety rules.

The National Taxi Workers Alliance made history when its leader, Bhairavi Desai, accepted the organization’s charter as a member of the AFL-CIO during an event today on “The Future of Work.” Highlighting the changing shape of the union movement, the event opened with remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Desai then took part in a panel discussion which included representatives of other labor organizations that represent workers who are either traditionally excluded from coverage by labor law, or for whom the changing shape of the economy means the protections they have on paper mean little.

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

At this morning’s Take Back the American Dream conference plenary, Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), told the audience that the people who care for others are a national treasure, but the nation has yet to adequately value their work. Poo described the situation of one domestic worker who cared for a disabled child 18 hours a day, six days a week for less than $3 an hour—and who was fired without notice, leaving her homeless overnight.

Congratulations to author Barbara Ehrenreich for the 10th anniversary re-issuance of her classic study of the working poor, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.” Ehrenreich didn’t just write a theoretical study, she based the book on her experiences working as a waitress, a Wal-Mart “associate,” a nursing home aide and a maid employed by a cleaning service.