Faced with soaring food prices, meagre wages, and rampant unemployment, a revolutionary movement in Tunisia emerged late last year and quickly acheived the unthinkable: the toppling the country's longtime autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Three leaders of Tunisia's labor movement who were instrumental in the revolution that shook North Africa -- Abdellatif Hamrouni, Najoua Makhlouf, and Sami Al-Awadi -- discuss the actions that inspired uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and even the American Midwest.

When Barack Obama was elected, many labor activists had great hopes for a turnaround for the union movement, which has been shrinking alarmingly over the past several decades. But nearly a year into Obama's presidency, things don't look so bright. Longtime labor organizer and journalist Steve Early talks about the state of unions in the midst of economic upheaval, as well as the legacy of sixties radicals in the labor movement today, union democracy, and conflicts within the movement itself.