The Willmar 8 were eight female employees of the Citizens National Bank in
Willmar, Minnesota
Willmar is a city in, and the county seat of, Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 21,015 at the 2020 census.
History
Agricultural expansion and the establishment of Willmar as a division point on the Great Northern ...
, USA who went on
strike
Strike may refer to:
People
* Strike (surname)
Physical confrontation or removal
*Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm
*Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...
on December 16, 1977 over charges of
sex discrimination
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...
. The tellers and bookkeepers were protesting
unequal pay and unequal opportunities for advancement. The women were Doris Boshart, Irene Wallin, Sylvia Erickson Koll, Jane Harguth Groothuis, Sandi Treml, Teren Novotny, Shirley Solyntjes, and Glennis Ter Wisscha. They set up a
picket line
A picket line is a horizontal rope along which horses are tied at intervals. The rope can be on the ground, at chest height (above the knees, below the neck) or overhead. The overhead form is usually called a high line.
A variant of a high l ...
outside the bank when the
wind chill was -70
°F (-57
°C
The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...
).
[ One other employee, Lois Johnson, quit just before the strike began.
"The women's strike caused stress for many in the Western Minnesota town of 14,000 people. Few outwardly showed support for the strike and the lawyer who took the women's case, John Mack, lost his position as county chair of the Republican Party."]National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Na ...
issued a ruling on the complaint. The NLRB declared that the bank was guilty of unfair labor practices, but those practices did not cause the strike. The NLRB ruled that the strike was "economic". As a result there was no back pay and no guarantee of the women recovering their jobs.[
Rhoda R. Gilman, the author of ''The Story of Minnesota's Past'' observed that "across Minnesota and elsewhere, banks quietly began to make some changes." In 1981 ]Lee Grant
Lee Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal; October 31, during the mid-1920s) is an American actress, documentarian, and director. She made her film debut in 1951 as a young shoplifter in William Wyler's ''Detective Story'', co-starring Kirk Dougl ...
directed a documentary on the Willmar 8 entitled ''The Willmar 8''. A 1984 docudrama, ''A Matter of Sex'', also directed by Lee Grant, was based on events related to the strike.[Corry, John]
"TV: 'A matter of sex,' story of a bank strike"
''The New York Times'', January 16, 1984
References
External links
{{Portal, Organized labor
Willmar 8 in MNopedia, the Minnesota Encyclopedia
Labor disputes in the United States
1977 labor disputes and strikes
Willmar, Minnesota
1977 in Minnesota
Labor disputes in Minnesota
1977 in women's history
December 1977 events in the United States
Quantified groups of defendants