The Park City Ski Patrol, as part of the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA), went on strike on Friday morning, with 204 mountain safety personnel and ski patrollers not signing in for work and going on strike. The mountain remained open on Friday as Vail Resorts leveraged “experienced patrol leaders from Park City Mountain and our other mountain resorts” to maintain safety on the mountain, Park City Mountain Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Deirdra Walsh said in a statement.
The unfair labor practices strike comes after ski patrollers and Vail Resorts met with a mediator on Thursday night, the statement confirmed.
Park City Ski Patrol last negotiated a contract with Vail Resorts in 2022. That negotiation took 18 months, and an agreement was reached after the union passed a strike authorization vote, according to an Instagram post by the group. But the group did not ultimately strike in 2022.
That contract expired in April 2024. Since then, Vail Resorts and the Park City Ski Patrol have worked toward a new contract. Negotiations stalled on Thursday. According to Cole Valentino, a ski patroller and one of the negotiators for the bargaining unit, the patrollers went on strike for two reasons.
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First, they claim Vail Resorts is negotiating in bad faith, and second, to improve compensation for the employees.
Valentino noted that the negotiations have been ongoing for nearly 10 months. After the union proposed a compensation package in September, it took Vail Resorts 55 days to respond. Finally, he said that Vail did not bring a counter-proposal on its wages article mediation on Thursday, which spurred the strike.
“We are deeply disappointed the patrol union has walked out of 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 the past four seasons, and we have reached agreements on 24 of the 27 current contract terms,” Walsh said.
Park City Ski Patrol: What They Want
Park City Ski Patrol calls for three changes, according to a post on its official Instagram page: securing a living wage (increasing base wages from $21 to $23 per hour, including an annual cost of living adjustment, wage parity, and incentivized certification), combatting wage compression with “fair” compensation for experienced and skilled senior patrollers, and improved benefits for healthcare, PTO, holiday pay, and parental leave.
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