It’s 1909 and the shirtwaist industry in New York is making profits of $50 million. But the young girls who work in the factories earn barely enough to live on, and their working conditions are brutal. When their pleas for help are rejected by the male-dominated union, the young girls who work at Johannsen’s Shirtwaist Factory band together to fight for a better life. They endure beatings, starvation, and even prison, but ultimately prevail, as the shirtwaist girls win the first industry-wide strike in American labor history. However, the girls’ real victory is in changing the way they see themselves – not as victims, but as fighters – and in discovering the power of sisterhood.