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PARK CITY — Ski patrollers working for Vail Resorts in Park City are "deeply disappointed" with the state of union negotiations, according to union business managers who held their first public protest Saturday since bargaining meetings began in May.
Just a day after the first rope drop of the season Friday, union members took to the streets in the driving wind, occupying all corners of the intersection at Park and Empire Avenues. The sky was spitting tiny hail beads at times, similar to the artificial snow sprayed onto the relatively bare slopes surrounding the town.
Passing police blipped their sirens in support, while a continuous stream of drivers honked their approval, sometimes laying on their horns the full length of a red light to the cheers of demonstrators. Firefighters, ski patrol from Solitude and members of the United Campus Workers of Utah also showed up in solidarity of the group.
Union representatives have meet with Vail 20 times since May, according to business manager Quinn Graves, a fourth-year ski patroller. Their contract expired the last day of April, and because the season has started, employees are working under tentatively agreed upon clauses while the rest of the agreement is worked on.
One of the main sticking points in the bargaining is pay. "We are being met at a bit of an impasse currently," Graves told KSL.com. The association is asking for a raise in base rate from $21 an hour to $23. "Currently they're being unwilling to meet that ask," Graves said, "And really, we just want our wages to be in line with current inflation, which we don't see stopping any point soon."
Measuring the consumer price index inflation, or cost of living inflation —$21 in January 2022 is worth $23.58 in October 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Vail's counteroffer to the union's proposal included a less than 0.5% raise across the board, according to a press release sent out Friday by the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association, "and removes foundational elements from the current contract." That percentage increase would equate to about $1 an hour to base pay.
One of those removed elements is called a "wage parity clause," business manager and sixth-season patroller Margaux Klingensmith told KSL.com. In 2022, Vail raised the base pay from $20 to $21 an hour. Without that clause, Vail wouldn't have to include unionized patrols in future increases, Klingensmith said. "We want to make sure that that parity is language is in our contract."
A prepared statement by Deirdra Walsh, vice president of Park City Mountain, was issued to KSL.com. "We are aware that some patrollers are picketing today," Walsh said. "Over the past three years, the average wage for ski patrollers across the company, including at Park City Mountain, has increased substantially – far outpacing the rate of wage inflation – resulting in very competitive wages," according to the statement.
In the off season, ski patrol professionals are wildland firefighters, wilderness guides, contract engineers, trail crew workers, farmers, doctors and paramedics, Graves said. They have to have medical certifications like wilderness first responder or outdoor emergency care training, and be able to ski the trickiest parts of the mountain.
"Our education continues as we move through our career," Klingensmith said, and education is another big part of the contract, ensuring that patrol workers become more advanced with evacuations, emergency medical treatment, ropes work and more. Vail agrees to send a certain number of ski patrollers to educational opportunities as part of their contract.
Although a worker's skills and knowledge increase from year to year, Klingensmith says their pay does not always reflect that. "One of our main goals for this negotiating session is addressing wage progression among our more tenured and experienced patrollers," according to Klingensmith.
"A lot of people have been here for a long time, and a lot of people want to be here for a long time," Graves said. "To make that feasible, it needs to be financially sustainable ... essentially around our fifth year patrolling, wages kind of start to flatline."
What does the negotiations mean for the average skier at Park City? Nothing, for now, the managers say. The demonstration is not a strike, and "everyone who's scheduled to work today is working really hard," Graves said. "It shouldn't look any different for an average skier out there today, and we hope they're having fun out there."
Walsh confirmed that "there are no impacts – and will be no impacts — to our mountain operations."
The vice president said they are "negotiating in good faith with the union that represents its ski patrollers to reach an agreement that continues to demonstrate the great respect we have for our patrollers and the guest service they provide at the resort."
Vail's proposal is "consistent with several other contracts accepted and ratified by our company's unionized ski patrols," Walsh says, and the company is "optimistic we will reach agreement." Two meetings are scheduled for the next week.
"We're trying to get to a point where our bargaining unit is thriving and right now, a lot of us are at a point where we're just trying to survive," Klingensmith said.
