Ski patrollers at Park City Mountain in Utah triumphantly returned to the slopes on Thursday, after ending a nearly two-week strike over union wages and benefits. The strike hobbled the largest U.S. ski resort during a busy holiday period and sparked online fury about deepening economic inequality in rural mountain areas.
Late Wednesday, the Park City Professional Ski Patrollers Association ratified a contract with Vail Resorts, which owns Park City and more than 40 other ski areas, that raises the starting pay of ski patrollers and other mountain safety workers $2 an hour, to $23. The most experienced patrollers will receive an average increase of $7.75 per hour. The agreement also expands parental leave policies for the workers, and provides “industry-leading educational opportunities,” according to the union.
Ski patrollers were jubilant. “This contract is more than just a win for our team — it’s a groundbreaking success in the ski and mountain worker industry,” said Seth Dromgoole, the lead negotiator and a 17-year patroller at Park City, in a statement. “This effort demonstrates what can be achieved when workers stand together and fight for what they deserve.”
Bill Rock, president of Vail Resorts’ Mountain Division, said in a statement that the agreement “is consistent with our company’s wage structure for all patrollers, non-unionized and unionized, while accounting for the unique terrain and avalanche complexity of Park City Mountain.”
Accusing Vail Resorts of unfair labor practices, the Ski Patrollers Association, which represents 204 ski patrollers and mountain safety personnel, went on strike on Dec. 27. The strike received national attention as a fight between the haves and have-nots — a global corporation valued at nearly $10 billion against the vital workers who aid and protect skiers on its properties.
With few ski patrollers to open trails, respond to accidents and perform avalanche mitigation, only about one fourth of Park City Mountain’s terrain was open during the strike.
Irate skiers and snowboarders at Park City soon pilloried Vail, taking to social media and national news organizations to denounce lengthy lift lines and contrast the high salaries of Vail leadership and expensive ticket prices with the relatively low pay of resort workers.
“Vail Resorts is killing skiing, ski towns and ski culture every place they go,” wrote one person on Instagram.
“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,” said Mr. Rock, of Vail Resorts.
The strike also highlighted the role that patrollers play — and the risks they take — in the operation of a major ski area. Typically, professional ski patrollers must receive emergency medical worker certifications and undergo training in avalanche mitigation and search and rescue. They are required to ski in challenging terrain, and are expected to successfully steer a heavy toboggan loaded with an injured skier. Snow safety personnel, who are also in the union, ski in avalanche terrain and throw explosives to trigger avalanches to ensure guest safety.
The strike also highlighted a problematic issue increasingly found in many tourism-supported rural mountain communities: The rising cost of living. In Park City, a city with a population of some 8,400 people, the cost of living is 33 percent higher than the national average, according to the Economic Research Institute. Some estimates run much higher. The median price of a new home in Park City is nearly $2 million, according to realtor.com, and more than 70 percent of homes are vacant or used as second homes. The Park City ski patrol union says that a living wage in Park City is $27 per hour, far higher than the newly won $23 starting wage of a ski patroller.
During the strike, the Park City ski patrollers attracted widespread support from the public, receiving more than $300,000 in a GoFundMe fund, to which more than 4,000 people contributed.
Since 2021, the number of ski area employees in the United States, mostly ski patrollers and lift operators, joining unions has roughly doubled, according to Ski Area Management, a trade journal. United Mountain Workers, part of the Communications Workers of America, now represents nearly 1,100 ski industry employees in 16 bargaining units across four Western states, 13 of which represent ski patrollers, including those in Park City.
At other resorts around the country, ski patrollers were buoyed by the strike’s success.
Ryan Anderson, vice president of the ski patrol union at Vail-owned Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado, said the outcome in Utah could be a step in ending what he called, “extractivism in our mountain towns.”
“I hope that this strike has the effect of announcing that these communities must be taken as serious partners in successful ventures rather than simply a source of labor that can be exploited,” he said.
Jon Jamieson, a second-year Park City ski patroller, described the resolution as “super emotional, with a lot of tears.”
“It’s a bunch of regular, time-clock-punching folks sitting at a table with this giant corporation and coming out ahead,” he said. “It would be really nice to think that this is a tipping point.”
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