The film chronicles the historic and heroic effort to organize low wage workers in North Carolina, where it is actually illegal for any Sate agency to agree to a Union contract. Despite being full time employees of the State of North Carolina, wages of many workers have been so low, that they have qualified for Federal food stamps.

While workers in North Carolina’s massive textile mills were finally able to secure a collective bargaining agreement with their employer to improve their wages and working conditions — though it took them 70 years to achieve this —- public sector workers are absolutely forbidden by State law from obtaining such an agreement, a decision that was ratified by the US Supreme Court on the basis of the "States rights" 10th Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Helping to give leadership to these workers has been a dynamic African-American union organizer working through one of the most progressive unions in the country.