The Willmar 8 made equal pay impossible to ignore

By Michael Kuchta
In December 1977, eight women went on strike against Citizens’ National Bank in Willmar. Their goals
were straightforward. They wanted equal pay for equal work. They wanted equal treatment.
They never got what they wanted.
More than 30 years later, however, people still remember The Willmar 8. Their goals and the impact they
made still resonate. They still hear examples of how – by taking a stand in a small, Minnesota town – they
changed working conditions for women they never knew in places they had never heard of.

‘Bigger than all of us’
During Minnesota’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2008, the Minnesota Historical Society placed The
Willmar 8 on its “MN 150” list, naming their strike one of the most-influential events in state history.
“It’s still pretty unbelievable how far it went,” says striker Teren Novotny. “There were a lot of people
standing up for their rights. But it obviously got pretty big – bigger than we probably will ever realize.”
The strikers, who all were bank tellers or bookkeepers, didn’t consider themselves feminists. They
weren’t taking a stand for women’s liberation. “It was just us against the bank, period,” says striker Sandi
Treml. “As time went on, it became bigger than all of us.”
That hasn’t changed.

Young women discover an eye-opening reality
Every year, high school and college classes invite members of The Willmar 8 to speak. “We don’t go out
looking for opportunities,” Treml says. “They come to us.”
In the classroom, students can’t believe what they hear.
“They have absolutely no concept of what women were up against,” Treml says. “They have expectations
that they have every right on the job that everyone else has. So when they see the documentary, it’s kind
of like, ‘How can that be? How could they treat women differently than men?’”
“We feel we can educate these girls so they don’t get out of high school thinking they’re going to be on
an equal level – because they’re not,” says striker Irene Wallin. “The door is not open all the way.
“Yes, they’re making more per dollar than we did. Now, it’s like 80 cents on the dollar. But, sad to say,
we’re still second-class citizens.”

Women trained their supervisors
The Willmar bank strike had been brewing for months. In May 1977, the bank’s female employees had
filed a gender discrimination claim. The women were tired of being paid less. They were tired of having
no chance at promotions. They were tired of training men who had no banking experience, but would
become their bosses and make more money on Day One than the women ever could.
More than anything, the women were tired of the attitude summed up by bank president Leo Pirsch, who
responded to their demands by saying: “We’re not all equal, you know.”
“A lot of people just felt that’s the way it should be,” Wallin says. “You don’t need to make that much
money, and you don’t need to make as much money as a man.”
Even when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that there was “reasonable
cause” to believe that the bank discriminated against women in promotions and pay, nothing changed.
“It would have been a simple fix,” Treml says. “All they would have had to do is post the job openings
and write down the qualifications. None of us would have qualified and that would have been the end of
it.”
But, Novotny says, “They weren’t going to let a bunch of female employees tell them what to do.”

Willmar gets worldwide attention
So, on Dec. 16, 1977, Novotny, Treml and Wallin went on strike. Five more women – Doris Boshart,

Sylvia Erickson, Jane Harguth, Shirley Solyntjes and Glennis Ter Wisscha – joined them. Five other
women kept working.
The strikers called themselves Willmar Bank Employees Association Local 1. Within hours, Twin Cities
media swarmed the town. Within weeks, The Willmar 8 were known around the world. In the next two
years, they appeared in newspapers coast to coast.
The women received thousands of cards, letters and cash contributions, at least for a while. They
appeared in national magazines such as People. Phil Donahue – then the biggest name in talk shows –
featured them. Actress Lee Grant made a behind-the-scenes documentary about them. NBC made a not-
very-accurate TV movie.
The strike split the town. Some businesses, Wallin says, blacklisted the women for years. But the bank
lost substantial deposits and customers. It eventually was sold, then sold again.
The strikers made huge personal and financial sacrifices in standing up for their principles. Their families
and, in some cases, their children lost friends. One striker’s marriage fell apart. But the women stayed
committed to each other.
“We were such a small group that we were not going to let each other down,” Novotny says.

Unions sent mixed messages
Many individual unions and union members rallied to support The Willmar 8.
Willmar unions let the women set up strike headquarters at the local Labor Home. Unions made financial
contributions. Members from other unions – most notably United Auto Workers Local 879 – made very
visible visits to join the women on the picket line.
But despite lofty rhetoric about The Willmar 8’s fight being “everybody’s fight,” no established labor
union came forward to take the strikers in.
“There were a lot of reasons,” Wallin says. “Most of them thought it was too hot an issue.”
“The unions, to them, it was a woman’s issue,” Treml says. “And the women’s movement saw it as a
union issue. And we were in the middle.”

NLRB ruling dooms strike
On the legal front, the EEOC negotiated a token cash settlement of the gender discrimination claim. But
the pivotal rulings came from the National Labor Relations Board in 1979.
The board ruled that the bank indeed had committed unfair labor practices in dealing with the women. But
the NLRB also said those violations of labor law did not cause the strike. Instead, the NLRB decided, the
women were striking for economic reasons.
The rulings meant the women could not get back pay. In fact, they could not get their jobs back, unless
vacancies occurred at the bank. “We knew we had no leverage left after that,” Wallin says. “There was
money and there was power, and we had neither one.”

Back together
The women moved on with their lives. The bank eventually rehired four of them, including Wallin. Only
Boshart stuck it out.
“There was no future there,” Wallin says. “Even Doris, after all the years she stayed there, was still a
teller.” Wallin took a job at an optical company, where she worked for 25 years before retiring.
Treml went to work at Job Service, then at Willmar Community College. Novotny went to school,
worked at a lumber yard, then got hired at Willmar Area Vocational Technical Institute.
In 1997, the technical institute and community college merged to create Ridgewater College. Once again,
Treml and Novotny worked at the same place.
Coincidentally, Wallin’s daughter, Susae Klavetter, also works at Ridgewater. “Being 17 at the time, I
don’t know if I really understood everything,” Klavetter says. “But my mom always stood up for what her
beliefs were. Even today, people recognize her name. ‘Oh, your mother!’ – and they just brag about her.
“That’s good to hear. People remember. They have not forgotten.”
Michael Kuchta is communications coordinator for AFSCME Council 5. This article is adapted from

Council 5’s Stepping Up magazine.

SIDEBAR
The Willmar 8’s AFSCME connections
The Willmar 8 strike against Citizens National Bank was the first time Sandi Treml and Teren Novotny
walked a picket line together. It was not the last.
Both women now work at Ridgewater College in Willmar. When state workers went on strike in
2001, Treml and Novotny went with them. “Obviously, we’re not afraid to go on strike,” Novotny
jokes. “We’ve done it twice.”
Treml, a member of AFSCME Local 4001, works in registration at Ridgewater. Novotny is a purchasing
clerk at the college and treasurer of Local 1801 in the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees.

It runs in the family
It is Irene Wallin’s family, however, that has the deepest AFSCME connections. Wallin’s husband,
Monroe, worked at Willmar Regional Treatment Center at the time of the women’s strike. One daughter,
Stacy, started there a few years later. As members of AFSCME Local 701, they joined AFSCME’s first
statewide strike in 1981.
Another daughter, Susae, now is a member of Local 4001 at Ridgewater College, where she is a
custodian. Susae’s husband, Rick Klavetter, works at the regional treatment center and is a steward in
Local 701. Both of them were part of the state workers’ strike in 2001.

AFSCME makes its presence known
During The Willmar 8 strike, Wallin says, “we got a lot of help from AFSCME locally – money, and
manpower on the picket line, and so forth.” In one memorable incident, she says, AFSCME corrections
officers came to town to join the women’s picket line. “They were really big guys,” Wallin says. “Just
humongous, and very intimidating.
“The next thing you know, here comes a police car. And he said, ‘Well, we got a little call from the bank
that there were some new people out here.’ And I said, ‘Well, they are intimidating, aren’t they?’ Then I
told him who they were.
“He just laughed and laughed. So he sat there the entire time, just to make everybody happy.”

Captions:
Willmar 007
Sandi Treml, now a member of AFSCME Local 4001, and Teren Novotny, now a member of MAPE
Local 1801, have gone from walking a picket line together to being co-workers at Ridgewater College in
Willmar.

Willmar 505
Irene Wallin says the issue was -- and still is -- equal pay for equal work. “We got letters from some
people that had their whole job description changed and raises given because of our strike.”