Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) reflects that upbeat era, along with her friends and co-workers at the city's Ford Motor Factory who laugh in the face of their poor conditions. Lisa (Rosamund Pike) is a fiercely intelligent Cambridge-educated woman , tending to the home with a husband that suggests she keep her opinions to herself. Rita is coerced into attending a meeting with shop steward Connie, sympathetic union representative Albert (Bob Hoskins) and Peter Hopkins (Rupert Graves), Ford’s Head of Industrial Relations. What she expects to be simply a day out of work, complete with a free lunch, turns into much more when she and her colleagues become outraged by the lack of respect shown in the meeting to the women employees.