Photo: PCPSPA // Willie Maahs
When the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA) authorized a strike last month, just weeks before the Christmas and New Year’s Holiday, Vail Resorts promised its incoming guests the labor dispute wouldn’t disrupt their travel plans. Park City would stay open even if the resort’s regular ski patrol staff wasn’t on hand to look over the mountain. A week later, union officials filed unfair labor practice complaints against the company for an issue that seemed to be linked directly to that plan — Vail Resorts was pressuring safety staff from other mountains to cross picket lines, they claimed.
That drama took another turn over the holiday after unions representing patrollers at Vail-owned Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte, and Park City, sent the company a harsh letter addressing the creation of what Vail called a “Patrol Support Team.” To put it bluntly, the letter pulled no punches.
First, Park City shared a video message from its COO, Deirdra Walsh, on Monday. While Walsh’s recorded message was fairly vanilla, the accompanying caption posted on social media likely didn’t sit well with the union. The five-paragraph message acknowledged that Park City Mountain hasn’t been able to open as much terrain as it’d like to, which would obviously impact the guest experience. The reason for that, they claim, is two-fold: a lower-than average snowpack and “operational impacts from the union’s action.”
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A written response sent to Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch came from four patrol unions the next day, calling Vail out for “pressuring, coercing, and intimidating” workers from other mountains to cross picket lines. The letter indicated that calling on ski patrol workers from other mountains has had a ripple effect on the safety of guests and operations at those other Vail-owned resorts — an obvious contradiction to Vail’s claim of keeping safety at the forefront in the midst of a strike.
“The remaining patrol leaders, who have been told they may also be required to travel to Utah, are now faced with sudden disruption of their personal and professional lives,” it reads. “These patrol leaders are faced with a no-win situation. In many cases, it has been implied that their careers and livelihoods are at risk if they do not support the company’s demand.”
After a few bullet-point demands and solutions amid negotiations between the company and PCPSPA, the letter also put Vail’s bottom line on blast.
“We recognize that the success of this company depends on the efforts of all involved. However, we believe that the $725M in stock buybacks and $863M in cash dividends over the last three fiscal years (a total of $1.59B) could be more equitably shared between the investors who passively accumulate wealth and the workforce whose labor make this financial prosperity possible.”
Vail Resort’s price on the New York Stock Exchange took a dip of almost five percent early Thursday, which likely plays into the PCPSPA’s, and its sister unions’, hands. The letter from ski patrol unions in Park City, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, and Keystone can be read in full, below.
