Equality, sadly, has been highly debated and fought in the history of the United States, whether it regards economic status, race, religion, gender, etc. What is troubling is how hard citizens have to fight to be treated equal. In 1977, eight women in a town in west central Minnesota learned this all too well. In a small, quaint town where diversity was just beginning to hit, and simplicity was paradise, Willmar, Minnesota was soon to discover a change in their way of looking and dealing with discrimination issues. Change was coming in the form of eight angry women: Doris Boshart, Jane Harguth Groothuis, Sylvia Erickson Koll, Teren Novotny, Shirley Solyntjes, Glennis TerWisscha and Irene Wallin. The members of the Willmar 8 started the first bank strike in Minnesota which became the longest strike at the time. This strike was monumental for Minnesotan women as well as women all over the country, showing them that they have the ability to change their own communities and the country.
The members of the Willmar 8 were part of a bigger movement than one solely in their workplace and town. They were part of the Women’s Rights Movements that started in the 1800s. Susan Gluck Mezey, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago writes about the Women’s Rights Movements, starting from the beginning, through the second wave and the current status on women’s rights. Abigail Adams, in the 1800s, states that “we ‘will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation’” (qtd in Mezey). Women in the United States have constantly been fighting inequality and discrimination since the beginning of our country. Women had been placed into a stereotypical gender role of being the wife, mother, caretaker, cook, cleaner and housekeeper. In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Henry Black, joined the fight for freedom and equality by bringing two oppressed groups together, slaves and women, to fight. Stanton and Mott organized the “Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, ‘to discuss the social, civil and religious rights of women’”, resulting in the Declaration of Sentiments being adopted in July of 1848, which focused on the inequality between men and women in the U.S. (qtd in Mezey).
After women gained the right to vote in nationwide elections, the efforts for equality tapered off, and settled down for the time being. During the World Wars, while the men were at war, the women took over their jobs in order to support their families and the loss of workers in the country. When the men came back, many of the women returned to the stereotype of being home and taking care of the children and the house. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a second wave of feminism in the fight for equality, “seeking to empower women and achieve greater equality in the political, social, and economic sectors of society” (Mezey). The women of these decades were starting to realize that there was more to them than the social stigma. The women wanted to work and advance their education and careers. The women during these two decades realized that in order for a change to be made, they needed to speak out against the injustice and demand for a change. The “National Organization of Women [NOW] and the National Women’s Political Caucus” brought attention to the new wave of feminism and “committed to the following goals: ending employment discrimination; equalizing pay disparities; and eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace” (Mezey). The NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now named Legal Momentum, has been influential in “litigation against employment discrimination, maintaining women’s access to healthcare, and combating sexual harassment and sex discrimination in the workplace and in schools” (Mezey).
Women were stepping up to the plate and it seemed as if the United States government was stepping up to fight inequality with them. In the previously stated article by Susan Gluck Mezey, she states that the creation “of a Commission on the Status of Women, established in 1961” addressed “inequalities and made policy recommendations in areas where women were not treated equally such as employment opportunities, education, and Social Security” (Mezey). Congress also proposed gender equality laws. These acts were: 1963 Equal Pay Act, the 1964 -Civil Rights Act, the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. Some of these laws passed in court, but some did not pass in court. Even though acts were in order, they were not always enforced, mentions Jon Fitzgerald’s article in the MINNPost. Employers were still getting away with discrimination practices and the pay gap between their male and female employees continued.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC, was created July 2, 1965, to fight for equal opportunity for employees regarding discrimination through “age, disability, equal pay/compensation, genetic information, harassment, national origin, pregnancy, race/color, religion, retaliation, sex and sexual harassment” (EEOC.gov). After being introduced in 1923, the Equal Rights Act went to Congress in 1972 but failed to pass by three votes. The ERA’s goal was to provide “‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex’” (qtd in Mezey). Glenna Matthews writes in her article for The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History that although the ERA did not pass to become an addition to the amendment, it showed that Congress was willing to fight for equal opportunity and rights toward women in the United States. The National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, was also influential in the history of the United States for employment opportunities. The Pace Law School Library Research website states that the NLRB was created in 1935 by Congress. It was made in order to provide a law to govern the relationships between unions and employers, give employees rights that are guaranteed from their employers, and to create fair bargaining, or no bargaining, between employers and employees. The NLRB website states that they also provide protection for “the rights of most private-sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve their wages or working conditions” (“Rights We Protect”). Equal treatment in the workplace that everyone deserves is what the women of the Willmar 8 were fighting for, what women around the country and world were, and are still fighting.
Minnesota and the United States have had a long history of strikes against unfair working conditions and pay. The book, A Popular History of Minnesota, by Norman K. Risjord, recalls a strike from the early 1930s in a Minnesota garment factory. The women who worked at this garment factory were payed thirty-five cents a dress, which ended up being around $2.13 a day (198). This was only if they were able to make eight dresses a day, which was hard for even the quickest of dress makers. Organizers in St. Paul and Minneapolis encouraged these workers and many others to come and strike against the code violations like unfair pay, seasonal work, and job insecurities that were present in these factories. A group of workers in a knitting department of a factory visited a unionized Milwaukee factory, and they were appalled with the higher pay and better working conditions (198). The union organizers then focused on Strutwear Knitting Company, who forced their employees to sign contracts restricting them from joining labor unions. Some of Strutwear’s workers made the brave decision to join the union and in turn, were fired. They fought for eight months against Strutwear and gained support from many labor communities around the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. In April 1936, the workers had won the strike against Strutwear and other garment industries. There were 500 women in the Hosiery Workers Local union and other unions around the state, and those workers standing up to the unfairness, helped other workers receive better treatment across the state (199). Risjord’s book shows just one brief instance of how strikes can be influential, the history of their importance and their place in Minnesota’s history.
Similar to the unfairness fought in Strutwear’s Knitting Company, the women at Citizen’s National Bank in Willmar were fed up the unfairness in their workplace. The last straw for the Willmar 8 came from the hiring of a young male. From a recollection book called, Minnesota 150, author Kate Roberts recounts the hard truth of the discrimination these women faced. The women were asked to train in a male, who was unqualified and new to banking but was going to be their boss. The women were more than qualitied for his position but were not given notice of the job opening. The women were being paid $400 a month, barely minimum wage, whereas new male employees were receiving $700 a month, at the same position (188). The highest female advisors at the bank were payed $4,000 less a month than their male coworkers in the same position and were expected to work overtime but were not given overtime pay (188). According to Citizen’s National Bank President during the 1977 strike, Leo Pirsch, this is because men have to pay for dates and was quoted saying in many articles “we’re not all equal, you know” (Fitzgerald). He also believed that the women would leave to have children, causing them to leave their jobs relatively early, making it unreasonable to pay them equivalent to the male employees. Pirsch also stated that he felt he should have been harder on them so they would have been more respectful toward him (qtd in Special to the American Banker). Why would these women stay? Why did they take the job in the first place, even though the strikers had heard older female coworkers talk about how their boss was sexist? How many of them had been passed over for job promotions? Had they heard the rumors about there being no advancement for the female employees at the bank? Minneapolis Star Tribune writer, Bob von Sternberg infers that this was because the women who worked at Citizen’s National believed and “thought that a bad job was better than no job, that changing institutions was something someone else did” (von Sternberg). These women had no idea of what their future would hold in the coming years, and what was to come from their bravery.
The women of Willmar filed a complaint with the EEOC about gender discrimination as well as an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board in November of 1976. Erica Dischino’s 2017 article for Willmar’s West Tribune states that the bank put up “We won’t discriminate” signs but did nothing else after the EEOC and NLRB reports were filed (qtd in Dischino). Minnesota 150, by Kate Roberts, states that the members of the Willmar 8 started the Willmar Bank Employees Association Local 1 in June of 1977, which was the first bank union in Minnesota. The EEOC took on their case and tried to help, but the bank management board caused the negotiations to not go through with the EEOC or the newly formed union.
On December 16, 1977, the women went on strike. The plan was to strike for a few months, receive an apology and fair negotiation from the bank, including a raise, and move past the inequality and discrimination to steps toward equality at the bank. They were given the name “Willmar 8” by the media. In sub-zero wind chill temperatures, it took the women “26 steps to cover the sidewalk in front of the bank” (von Sternberg), holding homemade signs demanding change and equal rights (Roberts). The women paced, marched, shouted and demanded change, but were looked at as radicals. They felt that the “most painful [thing about the strike] was the lack of local support. ‘We lost a lot of friends,’ she [Irene Wallin] said. ‘It wasn’t hostility-just a total disagreement with what we were doing. Later, a lot [friends who disagreed with the Willmar 8] said, ‘If we knew, we’d have supported you’’” (qtd in von Sternberg). Members of the National Organization for Women came to show support on the picket lines as well as members from the United Auto Workers (Roberts). Looking back on the strike, in a Washington Post article from January of 1984 by writer Carol Krucoff, Glennis Ter Wisscha is quoted saying that “at the time of the strike… ‘we didn’t see any big political issue. We were just eight women who’d been insulted long enough. We decided it was time to stand up for ourselves’” (qtd in Krucoff). The Willmar 8 were receiving letters from women all over the country, saying to continue the fight because their own workplace was improving due to the strike in Willmar.
In September of 1978, the “EEOC negotiated a settlement and the women dropped the lawsuit and agreed to work without a contract” and the strike fund dried up (Roberts). The bank did not give the women their jobs back, and what the women demanded was not given. Seven of the eight found permanent jobs elsewhere. Doris Boshart was the first to return back to Citizen’s National Bank and stayed there until she retired. Three others joined her for a while but did not continue working at the bank for long. In 1979, the “National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling that did not support the women’s position in regard to discrimination” (Roberts). The NLRB stated that the bank was guilty of only minor discrimination violations and that the strike was directed for economic reasons, not necessarily for gender discrimination reasons (Dischino). The NLRB also stated that there were unfair labor practices from the side of the bank but those did not cause the strike, therefore the women would not receive compensation. “The women received monetary supports from individuals, and union and feminist groups” which also caused the NLRB to rule against the women (The American Banker). The NLRB also believed that since the union did not specifically state that they wanted to negotiate for their wages, that helped the board rule against the women. Jon Fitzgerald’s article puts it bluntly that it meant the women were denied their pay raise, their strike compensation, and they did not technically get their promised jobs back. The women have mentioned in many interviews that they were heartbroken over the rulings, but knowing that people around the nation found their fight inspirational brought them hope. For the women’s movement, the strike was a success. It shined a sad spotlight on the common occurrences of discrimination in the workplace regarding gender. Showing that women in the workplace is the new normal. Women are demanding change and are not sitting by anymore.
Mary Hovland, a retired pastor and role model in the Willmar area, shared her experiences in Willmar during the time of the strike in a phone interview on February 12, 2019. She shared how in 1967 [ten years before the strike], she had just gotten her first job with a public health service group as a nurse providing assistance in rural schools. She then went on to explain,
“that I was pregnant with Dan, and you know told everybody, you know that was my first son, and told everyone I was [pregnant] because I was excited we were going to have a baby and I lost my job because of that…[her boss at the time] didn’t think ‘pregnant women belonged in the school’…I didn’t think fast enough because I just didn’t expect it, there was a lawyer in the office next to us, I could’ve talked to him or my dad about my rights, I was just so mad I signed the papers and left, and my [Mary’s] mom’s view was why would you want to work for someone like that…it wasn’t right. I’m sure it happened to other people and I was not the only one that happened to”
She also mentioned earlier in the interview that there were many experiences like this for many women and Citizen’s National Bank was not the only business in Willmar that discriminated against their employees. Mary shared, during a recent visit at a Willmar nursing home, she was conversing with a male resident whose wife had been working at a business in the 1970s. The business told her she did not need to be paid equivalent to the male employees because she worked to receive extra spending money, and that her husband was the main breadwinner. Over 40 years later, this husband is still angered with the discrimination his wife faced. During the Willmar bank strike, Mary shared that two big events and changes had just happened in Willmar on top of the strike. One of the elementary schools in Willmar had just hired a female principal, which people were on edge and surprised about, as well as a high number of Vietnamese citizens were beginning to move to the area. Currently, Willmar has a very diverse population, including many Hispanics, Somali, and Burmese citizens. In 1977, Mary Hovland was working as a lay ministry coordinator. One of the secretaries at the church where Mary was employed was married to the vice president of Citizen’s National Bank, so Mary heard both sides of the bank strike since her coworker sided with the bank and she [Mary] was friends with three of the women, who, according to Mary, “were all very solid women…would only do something like this for something they believed to be very important” (Hovland). Mary believed that this was a stepping stone for women everywhere. At the time, there were no women in churches, specifically no women in lead roles at parishes. Mary recently retired as a head pastor at Vinje Lutheran Church in Willmar. She felt that the strike has changed many workplaces, but many people living in Willmar do not realize its importance or know about the strike. At the end of her interview, she began to talk about the differences between when she first moved to Willmar in the 1960s to now and said, “Willmar has such great diversity, which to me is a plus because I like diversity and I think we all learn from each other. I love living in Willmar for that reason” (Hovland).
Not everyone in the community felt the same as Mary Hovland. Many were torn during the strike. Many people did not know what it was about or why the women were fighting. Some people honked and waved as they drove by, others hung their heads, or avoided the street altogether. Select business did not allow the Willmar 8 to purchase goods from them, including a nearby convenience store. Mary Hovland stated in her interview that the “general attitude of the public was ‘we don’t know that to do with this, we’ve never seen this’” (Hovland). Midwestern Bureau and Special to the American Banker journals shared insight on the responses after the strike from the bank and its employees. In 1979, Citizen’s National Bank’s new female employees chose to leave the Willmar Bank Employees Association, the union formed by the Willmar 8, by a twelve to eleven vote. Citizens National Bank was sold in March of 1979 and has undergone a few name changes but is still on the same corner. The women and others involved with the strike lost a lot, but at the same time, gained a lot as well. One of the women ended up getting a divorce and lost her home. The women’s lawyer, John Mack, lost his county GOP position, but still stayed on their case remembers Fitzgerald’s article. The women are quoted in von Sternberg’s article for the Star Tribune that they lost friends and their children were bullied. In the end, the bigger picture is why they continued the fight. They gained a friendship and sisterhood with each other, and with other women around the world.
The talk for equality will never officially be over for the Willmar 8, the country and the world. Glennis Ter Wisscha, who worked in St. Paul as a union organizer after the strike, was quoted saying, “that’s what fuels my belief that we aren’t done winning yet…people are still asking the questions. People still want to try to understand” (qtd in Fitzgerald). The women realized that the strike was not about the eight of them at their small-town bank, but about the nation and women’s rights as a whole. Alvina Breen, the head of the Minnesota Commission on the Economic Status of Women in 1987, when asked about the strike, replied, “These battles aren’t only won for yourself. The significance is that everyone remembers here’s a group of women who aren’t going to take it anymore” (qtd in von Sternberg). The Willmar 8 advise women to be “sure they are getting and equal title and salary for the work they do” and “make sure they are being treated fairly at work” and to stay involved with the importance of unions in the workplace (Hovatter). The story of eight, brave women received a significant amount of attention from the media. There was a documentary made about them in the 1980s. There were multiple articles written, from the time of the strike to now, which shows that it is not finished. The women also say that many students are still in contact with them, asking them about their experience with the strike.
The courage from the Willmar 8, the women before them, and after is an inspiration to women all over the world. The strike may not have ended the way the women had planned, but it helped start something no one could have imagined. This strike was monumental for Minnesotan women as well as women all over the country, showing them that they have the ability to change their own communities and the country. The fight for equality never over, and we should never stop learning from the past.
Works Cited
Dischino, Erica. “40 Years Later, Women Who Formed the ‘Willmar 8’ Keep up Fight for Equality.” Pioneer Press, Twin Cities, 17 Dec. 2017, www.twincities.com/2017/12/16/40-years-later-women-who-formed-the-willmar-8-keep-up-fight-for-equality/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.
“EEOC History.” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/index.cfm. Accessed 31 Jan. 2019.
“Federal Administrative Decisions and Resources: NLRB.” Pace Law School Library Research Guides. https://libraryguides.law.pace.edu/c.php?g=319362&p=2133825. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.
Fitzgerald, John. “In 1977, Boss Tells Willmar 8 ‘we’re Not all Equal, You Know’; Strike Ensues.” MinnPost.com, Jun 28, 2013. ProQuest, http://cordproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1372311082?accountid=10244. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.
Hovatter, Nicole. Willmar 8 members share how, why of origins. West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota), November 22, 2014 Saturday. LexisNexis Academic, https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5DNC-4YR1-DYNS-3149-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed February 6, 2019.
Hovland, Mary. Personal Interview. 12 Feb. 2019.
Krucoff, Carol. “The Willmar 8: Banking on Courage; A Striker Looks Back On Her Stormy Fight For Equality at Work”. The Washington Post, January 16, 1984, Monday, Final Edition. LexisNexis Academic, https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3S8G-MVP0-0009-X16N-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.
Matthews, Glenna. “Women and Politics since 1970.” The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, edited by Michael Kazin, Princeton University Press, 1st edition, 2010. Credo Reference, http://cordproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/princetoneaph/women_and_politics_since_1970/0?institutionld=4015
Mezey, Susan Gluck. “Women’s Rights Movements.” In American Governance, edited by Stephen Schecter, Macmillan US, 1st edition, 2016. Credo Reference, http://cordproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macusg/women_s_rights_movements/0?institutionld=4015. Accessed 31 Jan. 2019.
Midwestern Bureau. Minn. Bank Withdraws Recognition From Union formed by ‘Willmar 8’. The American Banker, May 23, 1979, Wednesday. LexisNexis Academic, https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3S8H-0F20-000F-R0J6-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed February 5, 2019.
“Rights We Protect.” National Labor Relations Board. https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.
Risjord, Norman K.. A Popular History of Minnesota. Minnesota Historical Society, 2005, pp 198-199.
Roberts, Kate. Minnesota 150: The People, Places, and Things that Shape Our State. Minnesota Historical Society, 2007, pp 188-189.
Special to the American Banker. Former Bank President Says, ‘I Treated Them Too Good’. The American Banker, January 16, 1984, Monday. LexisNexis Academic, https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3S8H-7CW0-000F-R54M-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed February 5, 2019.
von Sternberg, Bob, and Staff Writer. “Willmar 8 Stance Changed their Lives.” Star Tribune, Sep 06, 1987, pp. 01A. ProQuest, http://cordproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/417835252?accountid=10244. Accessed 31 Jan. 2019.