Agnieszka Kowalska (Katharina Thalbach) is a barely educated single mother working as a welder in a drab shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. She overcomes adversity and moves her way up through the factory hierarchy, becoming a leader among her coworkers. Despite being fired and then arrested, the determined Agnieszka teams with another disgruntled worker (Andrzej Chyra) to help form a union that will eventually lead to the fall of communism in her country and the rest of Eastern Europe in the 1980s.