LaConte: A brief history of ski patrol unions
While there have been plenty of close calls over the years, up until last week, a ski resort had not seen a strike in this country in more than 50 years.
The first organized labor action at a ski resort occurred in 1964, when the Aspen Mountain Employees Association asked for more than the minimum of $1.80 and the maximum of $2.05 offered. A deal was accepted for a starting wage of $2, followed by $2.20 for year two workers and $2.40 for three years or more.
“Aspen strike averted,” the Aspen Times headline read on Feb. 7, 1964 (all caps in a massive font).
The Aspen Mountain Employees Association wasn’t a formal union, though, and the Aspen 撸先生 Patrol joined the Teamsters in 1971. By December, they were on strike, requesting better wages. Replacement workers were hired and the ski company claimed it had enough patrollers to operate safely, despite reports to the contrary.
Those replacement workers gradually left, the Aspen Times reported, and the ski company hired back the old workers and agreed to match inflation with a cost-of-living raise each year.
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As we saw then, and we’re seeing this week with ski patrollers striking at Park City Mountain Resort, strikes can be unfortunate for the affected guests visiting the mountain. But history shows that collective bargaining is always followed by higher pay for ski area workers and, interestingly, those gains often benefit workers not threatening to strike, as well.
From 2020 to 2022, the Park City patroller’s union negotiated for a starting wage of $17. As that fight was underway, Vail Resorts raised the base pay to $15 for all its Utah (and Colorado) workers to start the 2021-22 season, saying it would, of course, offer union workers the same $15 starting wage. But that deal wasn’t accepted, the negotiations dragged on for 17 more months, and the day after the 50th bargaining session, Vail Resorts offered all workers 鈥� not just those in a union 鈥� a one-time $2 per-hour bonus.
By repeatedly rejecting the union’s request for a $2 per hour raise and then offering it as a bonus to all employees, the company was attempting to show the union that its collective action “had no bearing on the employer’s decision-making,” .
The workers had never been closer to striking at that point, with 98% of union members voting in favor of walking off the job. But after the 51st bargaining session a few days later, Vail Resorts presented terms the patrollers found acceptable, offering a $19 per-hour average wage for the union members.
Two months later, Vail Resorts announced it would increase its minimum wage to $20 per hour for all employees. While that rendered the Park City patrollers’ efforts (and all those hours from the 50 meetings the Vail Resorts negotiators participated in) as moot, it was a big boon for everyone else who worked for the company.
Vail Mountain and Beaver Creek have seen a few attempts to unionize workers over the years, but none have taken. Fifty years ago, on Dec. 30, 1974, workers voted against unionization by a large margin (more on that in next week’s Time Machine, our “this week in local history” column, which publishes on Mondays) and in 1979, Vail Mountain ski patrollers again voted against unionization.
In 2016, a group of full-time Beaver Creek ski instructors thought they had enough support to unionize, but when the labor relations board said a group of 472 part-time workers also had to be included in the vote, the group withdrew its petition.
, and in 1986 Aspen joined suit and created the Aspen Professional 撸先生 Patrol Association (the Aspen patrollers had withdrawn from the Teamsters in 1973). Breckenridge patrollers also unionized in 1986, and Keystone’s patrollers unionized in 1994.
In 1999, Steamboat Springs patrollers unionized, forming a chapter of the American Maritime Officers union. That chapter disbanded a few years later and they joined the Communications Workers of America along with Breckenridge, Keystone, Aspen, Crested Butte and Canyons at Park City. Keystone and Breckenridge left some time later, but .
Park City and Telluride also joined the Communications Workers of America in 2016, and Purgatory patrollers formed a union in 2022. Also in 2022, lift mechanics and electricians in Park City voted in favor of joining the patrollers, the first maintenance crew to unionize. Crested Butte lift mechanics followed suit in 2023.
In 2024, Keystone patrollers again joined a union, along with Eldora, Loveland, Whitefish Resort in Montana, Solitude in Utah and Palisades in California.
But the most interesting case study in ski area unions may have occurred at Stevens Pass in Washington. The resort had been around since the 1930s, operating with no unions, but when Vail Resorts acquired it in 2018, patrollers voted to form a union less than a year later.
In its coverage of the Stevens Pass unionization, Stevens Pass had become “a part of the Vail Resorts empire.”
The word empire is often applied to Vail Resorts. the company began “building its empire” in 1997 with the acquisition of Breckenridge and Keystone; Vail Resorts’ acquisition of Peak Resorts in 2017 was an example of the company “expanding its empire,” that customers across Vail Resorts’ “vast empire” were complaining about long lines, and , during a visit to Vail in 2023, described himself as being in the “heart of the empire.”
The book “Making the Empire Work, Labor and United States Imperialism,” describes how empires rely on labor, involving “coercive management, working-class politics, and a multifaceted military workforce.”
At a recent discussion from the picket lines in Park City, an angry guest to get his perspective on what was happening. The guest was Greg Ciola with Crossing Jordan Ministries, and he was upset because he was visiting from Florida, recovering from brain cancer, hadn’t been on the mountain in six years and couldn’t go skiing because the lifts at Canyons, which his family intended to use, weren’t running.
Ciola talked to patroller Lou Chiappetta, and in their conversation, the elements of labor and empire discussed in “Making the Empire Work” 鈥� including coercive management, working-class politics, and a multifaceted military workforce 鈥� were all present. The discussion was taking place amid what the Breckenridge, Keystone and Crested Butte unions an effort of “coercing” patrol leaders from other mountains to fill in for Chiappetta and his colleagues, and before long, Chiappetta had convinced Ciola of the importance of the working-class politics on display there.
“Anybody that supports law enforcement officers, or military officers 鈥� you should support these guys,” Ciola said.
Ciola then asked Chiappetta how many ski areas are owned by Vail Resorts.
“Forty-something, I believe, across the entire world,” Chiappetta said. “The sun never sets on the Epic empire.”
John LaConte is a reporter at the Vail Daily who authors the weekly Time Machine feature that runs on Mondays. Email him at聽jlaconte@vaildaily.com
