A strike by the ski patrol at Park City Resort, North America’s largest ski area by acreage, has shut a majority of the Utah resort for more than a week at its busiest time of the year.
Mediated talks took place again Friday between Vail Resorts, which owns Park City and 41 other resorts in North America, Europe and Australia, and the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association, which represents 200 patrol members and mountain safety staffers who provide first aid and rescue, perform avalanche mitigation and otherwise assist guests. But the union said it has not seen enough progress after 10 months of negotiations to return to work.
As a result, only 99 of Park City’s 350 trails were open, according to the resort’s real-time tracker on Saturday, up from 81 on Friday and only 50 earlier in the week. Only 26 of 41 lifts were operating. Resort management is using supervisors and nonunion ski patrol members from some of its other resorts to provide some coverage and keep at least part of the area open to the large crowds.
“We’re opening the terrain we can open safely with the staff we have,” said Sarah Huey, spokesperson for Vail Resorts.
Huey declined to comment on the number of visitors the area has gotten this week, including comparisons to previous years, but on social media some users have complained about long lines at the lifts that were still operating. The ski area reported it had received 31 inches of snow in the last seven days, normally ideal for skiers, but in this case frustrating given the lack of open areas, social media users said. Without the staff to perform avalanche mitigation, much of the fresh snow wasn’t safe for skiing.
Management said that it has raised ski patrol wages 50% over the past four years and that it now pays an average of $25 an hour. It is offering the union about a 4% raise in current negotiations, Huey said. But that would come out to a raise of just $1 an hour.
The union said that is not enough given the cost of living in and around the Park City area, known for its wealthy visitors and its hosting of the Sundance Film Festival every winter.
“They have raised wages a lot. But raising starting wages from $13 an hour to $21 is laughable,” said Quinn Graves, one of the union’s business managers and a fourth-year ski patroller. “No one can live on that in a mountain town.”
Graves said that the $21-an-hour starting wage set two years ago needs to be $23 just to cover inflation. She said the union’s demands would cost Vail Resorts only an additional $900,000 a year for a company that reported net income of $230.4 million in the fiscal year that ended in July.
In addition to an increase in wage rates, the union is pushing for higher longevity pay for more senior workers, a longer contract than the two-year deals it has worked under in the past and improved benefits and educational opportunities. Ski patrol members must have at least certificates as outdoor emergency care technicians, and many of them are EMTs, paramedics or nurses.
The strike started on December 27. Graves said this past week is typically the busiest of the season. Vail Resorts’ Huey would not confirm that. But this is one of the weeks that a lower-cost season pass sold to local residents cannot be used at the ski area due to high demand.
Shares of Vail Resorts (MTN) have lost 6 percent since the start of the strike, although they did rebound slightly to gain 2% in trading Friday.
