On Wednesday night, unionized ski patrollers at Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort unanimously ratified a new agreement with company owner Vail Resorts, officially ending a 12-day unfair labor practice strike that took place over the holidays.
The patrollers are returning to work with raises and new benefits. Entry-level patrollers saw their pay rise from $21 to $23 an hour, in a community where the living wage for a childless adult is $27.49. Vail, the skiing conglomerate that owns many of the West’s most prominent resorts, will now pay experienced patrollers an average of $4 more per hour, while the most advanced positions, such as snow safety specialists, will increase by an average of $7.75 per hour. The union also secured wage parity, so that if Vail raises wages across all its resorts, Park City patrollers will also receive a raise.
“We look forward to welcoming back the Park City Mountain patrollers in the coming days and moving forward together as one team,” Bill Rock, president of Vail Resorts’ Mountain Division, said in a press statement.
The strike hit during one of the busiest times of the year, and its effects rippled far beyond Utah. Vail had to call in supervisors from its Colorado resorts, and Quinn Graves, business manager for the Park City union, said the resort had to get by with just 30 to 40 patrollers a day instead of the usual 100. There were several reports of delayed injury responses, and some skiers complained about the limited open lifts.
Over in Colorado, ski patrollers from Eldora and Loveland resorts demonstrated outside Vail’s headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado, On Dec. 30. On New Year’s Eve, unions at Breckenridge, Crested Butte and Keystone sent a letter to Vail demanding the company stop pressuring its patrollers to leave.
But now, Park City patrollers are back on the mountain and working swiftly to open terrain. “We’re ready to be productive and get this place looking like it should,” said Max Magill, a 10-year patroller at Park City and president of the United Mountain Workers, or the Communications Workers of America Local 7781, which represents the resort’s patrollers. (Editor’s Note: Employees at High Country News are also represented by a branch of the Communications Workers of America.)
As part of the new contract, patrollers will now receive two weeks of paid parental leave. The company will also provide more parking spaces for its workers and pay for a van pool for those who commute the roughly 40 minutes from Salt Lake City.
The agreement took 10 months to reach, and, in the process, the union filed six unfair labor practice charges against Vail with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of failing to bargain in good faith, interrogating its employees and threatening retaliatory measures, such as eviction from employee housing.
“Negotiating with Vail Resorts has been an incredibly challenging process, marked by months of persistence and dedication from our board, negotiators, and union members,” said Seth Dromgoole, lead negotiator and a 17-year patroller at Park City, in a press statement.
IN THE WEEKS leading up to the new year, negotiations between the union and Vail reached a stalemate over pay and benefits. Park City’s patrollers insisted that the pay increases were needed simply to pay the bills and retain experienced patrollers, noting that it can take years for workers to understand a mountain’s terrain and avalanche paths. Many patrollers also have advanced medical certifications, ranging from Emergency Medical Technician to nursing degrees, yet at Park City, raises for patrollers have historically plateaued around the fourth or fifth year of employment.
Low pay and the high cost of living in mountain towns make ski patrolling challenging as a long-term career. In 2023, the top two employers in Utah’s Summit County (where Park City is located) were Deer Valley and Park City Mountain resorts. Even though the leisure and hospitality sector was area’s the top industry, according to Headwater Economics, jobs in this sector had the second-lowest wages, ranking just above agriculture.
Moreover, affordable housing is scarce: Graves said that about half of the patrollers live in the Park City area, while others are forced to commute roughly 40 minutes from Salt Lake City or surrounding small and more rural towns.
“Seasonal workers in all aspects of the outdoor world have been underpaid for so long because our jobs are deemed fun, which then seems to negate the fact that we’re providing labor.”
Ski patrollers work 10 to 13 hour days, often on weekends or holidays, and deal with dangerous conditions, Graves said, from avalanche mitigation to rescuing injured skiers. In the process, they often become a sort of family, though Graves noted that the perks of the skiing lifestyle are sometimes leveraged to suppress wages and withhold benefits. When Graves started working as a patroller, she recalled, Vail marketing promoted the job by saying the patrollers got paid in sunrises and sunsets. “Seasonal workers in all aspects of the outdoor world have been underpaid for so long because our jobs are deemed fun,” Graves said, “which then seems to negate the fact that we’re providing labor.”
The struggle to make a living on a patroller’s wages is not unique to Park City. “(Patrolling) would be a job that you would spend a few years at and then go on to, quote, ‘the real job,’” said Ryan Anderson, vice president of the Breckenridge Ski Patrol Union, which formed in 2021. The Vail-owned Colorado resort has experienced high turnover among its patrollers. “Our goal (in unionizing) really was to increase anything we could, to make people feel that they could see a path forward to a long-term career.”
Breckenridge’s ski patrol is among several units that have recently joined the United Mountain Workers. Magill said that in the last five years, the local has gone from four bargaining units and about 400 members to 16 bargaining units and roughly 1,100 members. Both Anderson and Amanda Kelly, a member of Keystone’s recently formed bargaining unit, said that their unions are learning from Park City, which has been unionized for over two decades, since before Vail ever acquired the resort.
Magill and Graves said that the Park City union’s history, combined with the energy of a wave of young, politically active patrollers, brought organizing skills that proved crucial to the successful strike and a new contract. Petitions for union representation elections have doubled since 2021, and strikes have also been on the rise nationwide
“We’ve seen this explosion in growth because of the strength of our contracts,” Magill said. “Also, I think there’s a broader picture to be seen here, which is that we are in a growing moment in the United States for organized labor.”
BEFORE THEY WON ANY concessions from Vail, Park City’s patrollers gained the support of their own town.When they held picket lines near the resort’s entrances to the resort, they were serenaded by the honking and cheering of passing drivers. Local bakeries and restaurants delivered food to them, and O’Shucks bar offered meeting space and held weekly fundraisers. In total, the union raised over $300,000. Even the tourists showed support: On one snowy day during the strike, skiers stuck in a long, slow-moving lift line began chanting “Pay your employees!”
As the strike dragged on, Park City’s Mayor Nann Morel issued a statement that called for Vail to resolve the conflict. “The Park City Council and I recognize that resort communities face significant livability challenges,” she said, “and it is the workforce that all too often shoulders the weight of today’s economic pressures.”
By early January, the strike had made national news. Videos of massive lift lines circulated widely online, and Vail’s finances took a hit. On Jan. 2, Vail’s stock dropped more than 6%, and after financial analyst Jim Lebenthal spent a week in hour-long lift lines at Park City, he shared his own grievances on CNBC’s Halftime Report.
“If you want to be in a travel stock, if you want to run a travel and a leisure company, you darn well better give the experience that you’re advertising,” he said, lecturing the company. “Because if you don’t, you will get negative PR and you will get non-repeating customers.”
The tourists’ response put additional pressure on Vail. After the strike ended, an Illinois man who claimed to have spent $15,000 on his trip to Park City filed a class action lawsuit against Vail for failing to disclose the strike or its impacts. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of anyone who purchased a lift ticket during the duration of the strikes, according to KPCW.
In a statement on Wednesday, Vail acknowledged the strike’s impact on visitors and workers. “We apologize to our guests who were impacted by this strike and are incredibly grateful to our team who worked hard to keep the mountain open and operating safely over the past two weeks,” Rock, of Vail’s Mountain Division, said.
Ultimately, the Park City ski patrol hopes its success inspires other workers in the outdoor industry to fight for better pay and benefits. Patrollers at Keystone in Colorado are currently in contract negotiations with Vail, and Kelly, a member of the bargaining unit, said she hopes that they reach an agreement quicker than Park City did. While management has yet to propose specifics, she said Vail pitched the idea of a similar economic package as Park City.
“We think all seasonal employees should be getting paid more, because we are the boots-on-the-ground people who allow this tourism economy to exist,” Graves said.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include information about a lawsuit filed against Vail Resorts.
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