(bright upbeat music) - [Interviewer] What is your opinion of the women's strike at Citizens National?

- Are you taking my picture?

- Yeah.

- It was an explosive time.

- Women weren't supposed to speak out like we were.

- Something within them just rebelled.

- And so it was time to take a stand.

- [Narrator] On December 16th, 1977 in Willmar, Minnesota, eight women, employees of the Citizens National Bank, walked out of their jobs and went on strike.

- They were indeed the first bank strike in the history of America.

These were eight women who had taken an action in their lives and had stood up, eight women together alone.

(upbeat rock music) - It was the last straw when they hired another man and wanted us to train him for management position.

We had done this many times in the past and the men would move right up the ladder to management and the women were still down at the bottom, training everybody that came in.

- So I'm Irene Wallin.

I was a head teller.

I had been there like nine years, 10 years.

Doris had been there 10 years.

We thought, "Hey, wait a minute.

We have people here that can do that job without a whole lot of training," 'cause we'd been there so long, but they wouldn't hear of it.

If we're qualified to train the men, then why aren't we qualified for the job?

- [Narrator] On coffee breaks, they started to talk.

Tellers and bookkeepers.

They were treated unfairly, passed over for promotion, paid less than men, and expected to give overtime without pay when needed.

- No, there was many things.

Comments made by the big president.

- [Irene] Mr. Pirsch told us that we weren't the chief breadwinner in the family, so why should we get what the guys get?

- He had been quoted that the men would have to take their dates and pay for their meals and so they needed to have more money.

They would support the household, and so they needed more money.

- We felt that we were not being heard.

- And we complained.

- And what happened?

- We were told we're not all equal, you know?

- We're not all equal, you know?

- We're not all equal, you know?

He said that many times to people.

- I guess I was raised that you should be acknowledged for your efforts and in the case of a job, then reimbursed fairly for your efforts.

- You know, it's like, equal pay for equal work.

- And one of our colleagues, Irene Wallin, is kind of a champion of making people aware that what we earned during our lifetime forever is an issue for us.

I mean it's because our social security is based on our wages that we earned.

And so if we earn less, that means a woman gets less in retirement.

- You know, it's really something very simple.

We all are angry about what happened and we wanna do something to change it.

- First we filed a grievance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

- Yeah, this is your EEOC file.

- Oh.

- That had the response to employees in it.

- I went to one of the negotiations, we'd be all at the table.

They would turn their back to the table and read newspapers to show that they didn't need to listen to us.

- So we soon found out we were not gonna go anywhere with this.

So that's when we start talking about going on strike.

- [Speaker] I met Lee and Mary Beth in 1982.

- [Lee] What's Irene doing?

- Irene is taking care of Rocky, her husband, who's now 90 years old.

But everybody's retired.

Sandi's retired.

Teren's retired.

- Oh.

Little man, little man.

Little tushy.

Where's his penis?

I'm a former actress.

Got my first big success in the film "Detective Story," which starred Kirk Douglas.

I remember going in front of the Un-American Activities Committee headed by Joe McCarthy, and what happened is that they blacklisted all the left-leaning actors.

And so from that day, I could not work in film or television.

And so my life became an activist's life.

So at 34, times had changed.

The hippies were in, free love was in, and I got a notice from the committee that I was no longer blacklisted.

The first picture I did was "In the Heat of the Night" with Sidney Poitier.

I got my first Oscar from my last big film, "Shampoo."

I was 50 then, and I would not be hired as an actress after 50 in Hollywood.

And so I became fascinated with directing.

Mary Beth Yarrow was my neighbor in Malibu.

I think we were best friends at the time, weren't we, Mary Beth?

- Yes, we were.

- Mary Beth and I were best friends.

- I was standing at the checkout counter at the grocery store and I looked down and there on the front page of the LA Times was this headline that said "Willmar Eight Cause Celebre."

And I took the article and read it.

And as Peter and I were driving over Malibu Canyon.

- Peter Yarrow, the famous singer, was her husband.

- I said, "I would really love to take a tape recorder and go and talk to these women."

And Peter said, "Well, instead of taking a tape recorder, why don't you go with a 16 millimeter camera and make a documentary film?"

- And so I said, "Well, can I direct it for you?"

And we can go to Willmar and film these women who are on strike.

- When I came to first meet with them, to ask them if they would be interested in allowing us to do their story, there was some reservation, I'm sure.

- We couldn't believe that they were gonna do this, you know, that it was gonna be anything.

But then Mary Beth Yarrow, she was from Willmar, so she knew the town, the city, she grew up here.

- Willmar is named after a man by the name of Leon Willmar, who was a London financier.

And here we are now at the Kandiyohi County Historical Society where it says, "Keeping your heritage alive."

And I find it an interesting juxtaposition that these eight women are a part of this heritage and story of Willmar.

- [Interviewer] When you went in to film "Willmar 8," what were you hoping to capture?

- Well .

.

.

Documentary is documenting.

All you can do is hold up a camera.

If the situation is interesting and alive, you got something.

- [Teren] When we started with the strike, there was a real sense of excitement.

- We did not think it was going to last long.

- And 10 days and two weeks went by.

- [Sylvia] We thought they'd have to talk to us.

- But that didn't happen.

(laughs) The strike continued then for a couple years.

We went through two winters.

- It was cold.

- Extremely cold.

- We went from Malibu, which is always summertime, to, I don't know, was it 40 below?

- [Irene] I think the coldest day we were there was 70 below windchill.

- It was like the coldest period that Willmar had ever experienced up to that point.

And that was the weather that these women were striking in, in their ski suits.

- Snowmobile suits, like Irene's purple one back here - [Lee] And their ski boots.

- A couple of us went through a couple pairs of boots.

- [Lee] And their mufflers and their hats.

- [Sylvia] You had to stay warm and you dressed the part.

- It was so cold that the cameras would freeze and then they'd have to go across the street to the grocery store that was there at the time and thaw them out.

- When I went up to speak to people in the street, to say, "What do you think of the Willmar eight?"

my mouth froze.

- [Irene] And so we had to take turns going back to the labor home and get warmed up.

And then they'd come back and the next two or three would go and get warmed up and come back.

- The Willmar Labor Home was our headquarters.

Or occasionally, if it was really bad, we would take turns going into a heated vehicle.

Yeah, those days were very much the hardest.

But then summer created the opposite, you know, where it was extremely hot outside.

- So we went from frostbite to bug bite back to frostbite.

(laughs) Back to bug bite.

- 16 steps.

- From that driveway to that driveway, back and forth.

- Yeah, - That's all the farther we went, so.

- [Interviewer] How many steps did you say it was?

- 16.

- Was it?

I don't even.

- Do you want us to sing our song?

- [Teren] Oh, I don't know if I remember it.

- I wanna sing it.

- Here we go, girls, we're gonna sing this song now.

Are you ready?

You want the words?

They are embedded in our brain.

Okay, here we go.

♪ We'll never stagger ♪ ♪ We'll never fall ♪ ♪ We'll show the bank ♪ ♪ They can't win 'em all ♪ ♪ Marching, marching day by day ♪ ♪ We'll fight till the bastions fall ♪ ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la ♪ - And you start it over again.

(women laugh) It isn't fun after you sang it a thousand times.

- At least you wrote it in a lower key.

(laughs) - On the first year, no one missed unless you were sick.

- Because we were not going to let that bank be without us out in front of it.

- Some days you felt like you didn't want to participate anymore, that you wanted to just go back to a normal life, but you didn't wanna let the other women down.

- [Teren] There were days, I'm sure, you just wanted to call and say, "No, I won't be there today."

But with so few of us, we couldn't.

- We're not like another union local in that, they're probably, and most of 'em are from two to 500 members, maybe more.

So they have that many people to run their strike.

They have a committee for publicity.

They have one for raising money, they have one for picketing.

We do it all.

- And then this was the button we wore.

(laughs) Which makes no sense to you, I'm sure.

Oink oink.

- Struggling there.

- [Interviewer] What was the oink oink part again?

- Well- - 'Cause they were piggies.

They were piggies.

- They were piggies, yeah, for claiming all the money and not paying us back.

So they called 'em, we called them that.

That's probably the worst we called them was pigs.

- Honestly, it's very boring.

You know, we tried to entertain ourselves.

- And we played games on the picket line.

- We played, it was called Picket Line Puck.

Yeah, we crushed a can and we'd kick it back.

That's when I fell, I think, I was kicking, and we'd make goals and oh, we had a little bit of fun.

- We had people drive by and honk and wave.

And we also had people drive by and not so nice a thing coming out of the car.

(laughs) - We had one fella say, "Go home and take care of your babies."

- Teenagers making comments like smoke pot, get high, and that sort of thing.

- One day we had a lady come up and she said, "Well," she said, "You ladies were making more than I am.

I'm making $1.75 an hour cleaning rooms at the nursing home, and that's all I deserve," she said.

Oh, I couldn't believe she said that.

Of course, we went back and thought, "Wow, how are we gonna gain support if this is the way things are out there?"

(laughs) - [Mary Beth] As the women looked for support from the outside world, in the beginning they had the women's movement who came to march with them.

- We had a different union group stop and would picket with us.

- But after a year and a half of being out there, the AFL CIO faded away and the National Women's Organizations also didn't come.

- 'Cause it got pretty tight.

We weren't getting much money.

And I had three kids, Sylvia had two, and it was close.

- [Mary Beth] By not working, their families were really put in a financial chaos and stress.

- [Interviewer] What's the one that's out of your budget right at this point?

- Anything over 23 cents a can.

But I was looking at the vegetable beef and that was a little bit more.

- [Irene] You know, you were all always together and you talked about a lot of things.

Maybe if you're having a problem at home or whatever, you could discuss those things and know that people weren't going to let it go any farther.

- Okay, who is really short this payday, who is really in trouble?

- I just don't know what to do.

I really don't.

- [Irene] Yeah, there was plenty of nights that we'd come home in tears because the day hadn't gone that well.

- We're gonna make it through this thing, you know?

- Oh yeah.

- One way or another.

- It was touchy, touchy time.

You were really either up here or down here.

- Their quiet kind of bravery and this kind of comradery they had was the most important element of this - [Teren] Kind of the evolution of all that is we became our own family in a sense.

- That's what kept us together all that time.

And of course, we got closer and closer.

- We don't get together all the time or see each other all the time.

But you feel it once we're back.

- Yeah, yeah.

Other people gave up on us or failed us.

We never gave up.

- [Interviewer] What were you saying about the magazines where you're in?

- Both of 'em, "People" and "Us."

- That's a couple of them.

- We're in both of these.

Let's see if we can find it.

No.

- We were quite pleasantly surprised that there was a lot of news coverage of us when it became national and international, it was like, blew our minds.

(laughs) I think the longer the strike went on, media seemed to be more and more interested in it because probably how stubborn we were.

I don't know.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] So how did it feel to be featured in a NBC movie of the week?

- [Voiceover] We walked the picket line through the bitter cold of two Minnesota winters.

- "Matter of Sex.

- "A Matter of Sex," it sounds like something entirely different than it was.

Believe me.

(women laugh) And we were on "Phil Donahue."

Glennis and I went to "Phil Donahue."

- We'll be back in just a minute.

- It became a political issue, a social issue, a union issue, and a women's issue, all bundled up into one package and we were the package, the eight of us.

- So you want a picture of us?

- We need to be close.

- Okay.

One of our greatest honors too is the teamsters from Canada, Toronto, put up an eight story building, housing development, in our name.

- These are pictures of our time in Toronto.

Oh, was it cold.

These are the people that put up the apartment building.

Written across the front of the building is Willmar Eight Co-op Housing.

It's just really nice.

At that time, and I don't know how it is now, but they were unionized big time.

I mean, they were believers.

And our mayor at the time told me that he and his son went up there and they went through it.

And so I thought, "Well that's interesting.

Where were you when we were walking back and forth?

Why didn't you come and ask us what was going on?"

Nobody did.

- Our strike ended when the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, they recognized that there were actions at the bank took that were not equal and fair, but they didn't really rule in our favor.

- [Irene] When we found out that we had lost the National Labor Relations Board hearing, we were all in tears.

- The women were not given back pay and they would be hired only as there were openings in the bank.

- I was called back to the bank after I had gone back to school and had secured another job.

So I never did return to the bank.

- I never felt like we lost.

- I always say that, you know, we didn't make a big impact, but we made a dent.

- Can I quit Now?

This is the hard part.

(laughs) - [Lee] They lit a light for women in banking all over the country.

- We changed things in the banking industry.

- I'm so proud of it.

And even though we didn't like, as a little group, win, we kind of think, I do anyway, think that we won because we spread that word far and wide that women were being put upon because they weren't making equal pay.

When we went out on strike, we were way down in the 30s, 30 to 40 cents on a dollar.

So we've climbed, in 46 years.

We start still aren't at that dollar for dollar.

But we've made some headway.

- Because of the timing with the women's movement, we were definitely an influence on those changes that came about.

- I think women of today, the conditions have improved a lot, but women still need to fight for their basic rights.

- It is a tectonic shift on abortion rights.

The US Supreme Court today remade the legal landscape, throwing out the precedent laid down 50 years ago in Roe versus Wade.

- A woman cannot get an abortion in many states.

- Well, I think we went backwards a little bit with Roe versus Wade and some of those things.

I think we've backed up a little bit.

- It didn't even dawn on me before it came up that something like that would be reversed.

It's almost like voting rights, the same thing could happen with voting rights under the right circumstance, which is extremely scary.

I just was in disbelief over that and very, very much saddened for it.

Sandi, Sylvia.

This is really nice back here because these were always behind glass.

Have you ever seen this poster?

- When the Barn Theatre did "9 to 5" a few years ago, they had an event for us and then I think that's where these posters- - Yeah, I think so.

- Came from.

- I think you're right.

- My boots.

(laughs) I told them they could keep 'em forever.

(laughs) - We've had a lot of young people during History Month, National History Month, wanna do interviews with us.

So we've met here and done that.

- So I quick dug out the boxes of things that I had and brought 'em out here.

So that's kind of where they've been digging through the boxes of everything I saved.

I'm donating 'em now to the Historical Society.

I've given them a couple of other things along the way too, and I think it's important 'cause the kids can come here and look in there and see what they can find.

- We should keep that together.

- So I give the students ahead of time this "Willmar 8" questions and answers so they could get a head start on what they were going to ask.

- [Teren] Because they were repetitive.

- Yes, very much so.

We never dreamed that I would still be talking to you today, let's say, I'm 85 years old, and I'm still talking about the strike and it's a good feeling that people are remembering.

- Now very intense crying.

(women laugh) - Oh yeah.

- That's happened, but.

- Back in the day- - Not today.

- You would've gotten some of that.

- Yep.

- Or if you make us watch the documentary.

- Yep.

- Oh God, yeah.

If you make us watch that, that's- - We'll cry.

- There'll be tears.

- Bad news.

(indistinct chatter) - Good afternoon everyone.

I trust you've had a nice day in Willmar and enjoyed the bus ride and you're in Willmar on a nice day.

My name is Val Swanson.

I'm a retired instructor from Ridgewater College.

So I'll tell you a little bit about the "Willmar 8."

Here's a DVD.

Right.

Anyone who wants to look at that.

And we're very lucky this afternoon that we also have four speakers who will be coming on after the documentary - Housewife, Minnesota.

- Yes.

- [Interviewer] Children probably in the church choir, the whole business.

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] In what union are you now?

- Welcome to the Willmar Bank Employees Association Local 1.

- Ah, you formed your own then.

- Yes, we did.

- [Interviewer] Were you ever involved with any political activities before?

- No.

Nothing.

- No.

I thought politics were boring.

- [Interviewee] No, not at all.

Not in anything.

The most I was involved in politics was to vote.

- [Sylvia] Everyone that's left of the Willmar eight, they're still our family.

- Two of the eight have died.

Doris Boshart was the first, and then just recently the youngest, Glennis Ter Wisscha, died as well.

- Two years ago, my awareness was in a different place.

My head was just totally wrong and a feminist was a woman libber, was somebody who was out of control and just totally strange, kinky if you were.

♪ Marching, marching, day by day ♪ ♪ We'll fight til the bastions fall ♪ - [Announcer] How about a nice hand for those girls that stood out there and marched around in the cold and rain, sleet, and snow?

Like I said earlier, they got more guts than most men do.

- [Interviewer] What do you want your legacy to be?

- I think, my legacy would be I tried.

I tried.

- You know what I'd like to do, honey, I know you're thinking of a question to ask me, but I would like to read the names.

- [Interviewer] Yeah, absolutely.

- Is that all right with you?

- Yeah.

- These are the women of the Willmar eight.

Doris Boshart, Irene Wallin, Sandi Tremel, Teren Novotny, Sylvia Erickson Koll, Jane Groothius, Shirley Solyntjes, Glennis Ter Wisscha.

These are the heroines.

Heroes or heroines, whichever.

(audience applauds) - I don't think I'm gonna do anything overbearing today.

(women laugh) - Time to move our cars.

- We'll see you, see you around, I guess.

That was fun.

(women laugh) - [Announcer] This program is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.