Can Unions Save Ski Patrollers? – Outside Online

This winter marks Ryan Anderson’s ninth year ski patrolling at Colorado’s Breckenridge Resort. But when the lifts started spinning in late fall, he’d grown frustrated by certain aspects of the job. He just wanted to be treated like a professional, with sick leave—especially as a frontline worker during a pandemic—and ideally more robust benefits, too, after nearly a decade of serving the same company. Most important, he wanted better compensation so he could afford to live where he works—a ski town where median housing prices have increased 37.8 percent in the past year.“They say, ‘Your benefits are being up on this beautiful ridge,’” Anderson says. “Yeah, sure, but I woke up early to be here in a 40-mile-an-hour breeze with 20 pounds of explosives on my back, and I can’t take that ridge to the bank and pay a mortgage.”This is why Anderson, along with many other ski patrollers across the country, recently formed a labor union, turning to collective bargaining to try and make theirs a sustainable career. Breckenridge’s ski-patrol union reached a contract agreement in December with the mountain’s ownership, Vail Resorts, which addressed many of Anderson’s concerns. Meanwhile, after 51 rounds of negotiation meetings, Utah’s Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA) union, which was founded over 20 years ago, just agreed on a new contract with Vail Resorts as well, while in December, patrollers at Washington’s Vail-owned Stevens Pass voted on a union contract that was two years in the making. And last season, patrollers at Montana’s Boyne-owned Big Sky Resort voted to unionize.Although Vail’s leadership has made it clear that they don’t think unionization is the best path forward for patrollers, Sara Olson, vice president of communications for Vail Resorts, told Outside, “While we believe the most effective relationship is a direct relationship with the company, we respect the right of our employees to choose to be represented by a union and comply with the rules and regulations involved. Regardless of if they are unionized or not, we are committed to treating all of our employees fairly and with respect, and we are always listening to their concerns equally.”

Source: Can Unions Save Ski Patrollers? – Outside Online