A dedicated shop steward for CGT (General Confederation of Labour), he is charged with calling out the names in a draw in the shipyard to select who will be the 20 workers which it has been agreed will be made redundant.

His fellow workers and his family organize a party for his 30th wedding anniversary and present him and his wife with travel money and a ticket to Tanzania so they can climb Mount Kilimanjaro, singing the 1960s hit song "Kilimandjaro".

In the spirit of his hero, the French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, he decides to try to help the two younger brothers, only to discover that Marie-Claire has beaten him to it and is already secretly taking care of the children.

They realise that it is their shared ideals that cement their relationship and, after arguments with their own, grown-up, children and with Raoul, they take the two boys into their home to look after them while their brother serves a long sentence.

The story, written by director Robert Guédiguian and Jean-Louis Milesi, takes its inspiration from the poem Les pauvres gens [Poor People] (How Good Are The Poor) one of the best known of Victor Hugo's poems from his three-volume poetry collection, La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries).