Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
At ski resorts across the country, patrollers are considering forming unions. This includes Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR).
But on Friday morning, JHMR’s ski patrol said the current timing wasn’t right.
“After a vote, we have chosen as a team not to unionize at this time. The petition and vote have created space for dialogue and to give new ownership the opportunity to listen and respond. Above all, we want to thank the ski community for the overwhelming support. We’ll see you on the hill,” the group posted on Instagram with a heart emoji.
Jackson Hole Community Radio’s Sophia Boyd-Fliegel has been covering the patroller’s efforts and shared her reporting with Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska.
Kamila Kudelska: So there's breaking news about this unionization effort.
Sophia Boyd-Fliegel: Yeah. So, on Friday morning, Jackson Hole ski patrol, which has a little less than 100 people, updated its Instagram with a message that it had actually voted not to unionize at this time.
KK: Why were they trying to unionize?
SBF: When ski patrol announced that they had the signatures to ask for a union vote, they sent out some pretty vague official statements that were generally pointing to just a desire for better compensation.
The off-mic conversations that I had with patrollers were more specific for a desire for higher wages across the board, better healthcare and mostly a hope that they could retain the younger generation of patrollers to stay, learn the mountain and become a better team.
KK: In other ski areas, like La Massif, a major resort in Quebec, and Telluride in Colorado, patrollers have actually gone on strike as negotiations broke down.
SBF: I spoke with Julia Caulfield, she's the news director at KOTO in Telluride, about what's happening down there. I wanted to understand what could happen here in Jackson, because from my conversations, I don't think that this fight for better compensation is going away.
SBF: Telluride ski patrollers have been unionized for a decade now. Is this the first time they've gone on strike?
Julia Caulfield: Yeah, so exactly as you mentioned, ski patrol in Telluride has been unionized for a decade. They negotiate their contracts with the ski resort every three years. Last year, they began contract negotiations in June. Their contract expired in August. That is typical protocol is that they will work with the resort over several months to negotiate a new contract. This is the first time that they're striking. It's the first time that they've ever not gotten to that finish line before they get to this final stage.
SBF: Yeah, I would love to know more about that because I have heard those voices of patrollers from your reporting who have said that they're pretty upset that it's come to this. Can you give me some more details of the negotiations? What exactly do patrollers want?
JC: I think with many union negotiations, obviously, the most simple thing is it is about pay, right? They want higher wages. They believe they deserve those higher wages for what they will say is a professional and career job. Your listeners know in these mountain communities that are really expensive where rent and mortgages can be thousands of dollars a month or whatever that might be. So they have dropped some things from their original ask, including, they asked for a healthcare stipend. They weren't asking for healthcare to be provided. And when I spoke with them, they didn't give exact numbers of where they had lowered their ask to, but they did say that they've continued to come down. I will say on the flip side, TelSki, the ski company, has said that the offer they've provided is a fair market-leading wage.
SBF: Well, just give us a sense of scope right now for what ski patrol averages pay right now.
JC: Currently, base rate for new patrollers going in is about $21 an hour. The last offer that TelSki gave would have put a trainee ski patroller at $24 an hour, going up to specialist, which is on the higher end, which would be $39.60 an hour. And ski patrol leadership was saying they want to work on a base wage structure and fixing what they see as a broken base wage structure rather than a bonus structure. The example that the vice president of the ski patrol union said, you can't go to a mortgage lender and say, ‘Trust me on this loan. I'm going to get a bonus at the end of the year.’ I would say ski patrol on the whole is kind of aging. There's a lot of folks who have been with the mountain for 30, 40, 50 years. But they will say that this is a hard mountain and it will take four, five, six years to really feel like you know what you're doing. So for ski patrollers who come in and can't make it past year two or three because they can't afford it, then you're losing that institutional knowledge. You're losing the ability to have a really strong patrol that is really confident on the mountain.
SBF: That retention aspect, it sounds similar to the conversations I've been hearing here at Jackson Hole with our ski patrol. I would like to know now what the reaction has been like around town. We're talking here about an economy that, similar to Jackson Hole, is reliant on tourism. So what are people saying?
JC: I would say on the whole, locals have been really supportive of ski patrol, at least publicly. You know, I think this is a hard conversation because it is really nuanced, right? I think there's a lot of people who support ski patrol want them to get a fair wage, but at the same time, as you said, in a tourist economy, if people aren't coming here, that impacts everybody. We have seen that lodging numbers are down. And then you add onto it another level that is maybe impacting but not directly connected is we don't have a good snow year either. And so even if all the lifts are open, it's not like it's a banner year for skiing.
