- Nearly 200 members of the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association went on strike over wages and benefits.
- Vail Resorts says wages have increased for ski patrollers by over 50% over the past four seasons.
- The Park City resort remains open with patrol leaders from Park City Mountain and other resorts.
Park City Mountain Resort reported six inches of new snow overnight but it will be missing many of its usual ski patrollers and safety personnel who went on strike Friday morning during the busy holiday season.
Instead of clocking into work, nearly 200 members of the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association hung up their jackets and formed a picket line to amplify their fight for better wages and working conditions. The association blames Vail Resorts for the walkout, saying the company has bargained in bad faith and repeatedly violated the National Labor Relations Act.
The union says Vail Resorts, Park City’s parent company, has made no reasonable movement toward an agreement on wages and benefits, including not making a counteroffer during negotiations the past two weeks. According to the union, the patrollers’ $21 per hour wage has fallen behind other resorts.
The union is encouraging the public to support locally owned businesses to send a message to Vail.
“While we are on strike: don’t buy day tickets, don’t purchase food from the lodges, don’t use Vail-owned tune and rental shops, don’t stay at Vail Resorts owned lodging. We are asking our community to help us tell Vail Resorts to bargain in good faith. While the union strives for better wages and benefits, please support us and our amazing community by shopping at local businesses instead,” Quinn Graves, union business manager, said in a statement.
A GoFundMe account organized by the ski patrol association has collected nearly $50,000 since the strike began.
What Vail says about ski patrol strike
Deirdra Walsh, vice president and chief operating officer of Park City Mountain, said in a statement that the company is “deeply disappointed the patrol union has walked away from mediation and chosen drastic action that attempts to disrupt mountain operations in the middle of the holiday season, given we invested significantly in patrol with their wages increasing more than 50% over past four seasons, and we have reached agreements on 24 of the 27 current contract terms.”
In addition to the wage increases over the past four years, the current Park City Mountain patrol proposal increases wages another 4% for the majority of patrollers and provides $1,600 per patroller for equipment, Walsh said, adding Vail is committed to reaching an agreement.
Vail and the union began mediation Thursday, with another session scheduled for Friday before the walkout.
Despite the strike, the resort will remain open with patrol leaders from Park City Mountain and our other mountain resorts, she said.
The bargaining began after the ski patrol association’s contract expired on the last day of April. The possibility of a walkout has been brewing for weeks. Regular picketing demonstrations have taken place across Park City since late November.
The union announced Dec. 13 that it had authorized a strike following a contentious negotiation session with Vail Resorts. On that day, 98.5% of the union took part in a strike authorization vote with 100% of those participants voting in favor of a strike, according to the association. The union says it has been forced to file multiple unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board and that Vail “has doubled down on its anti-worker strategy by flying strikebreakers (scabs) to the resort.”
Tense negotiations between the Park City ski patrol association and Vail Resorts and the prospects of a strike aren’t new.
In January 2022, the company and the union reached an agreement to avert a work stoppage after a year of talks. Negotiations heated up after patrollers raised over $100,000 in a GoFundMe drive and voted to authorize a strike.