A small-town car thief and his transvestite wife come across an abandoned infant; they amputate his tongue and train him for a life in crime.

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.