An agreement has been reached between the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association and Park City Mountain.
The tenative agreement awaits ratification by the union's bargaining committee with a vote scheduled for January 8, 2025, Vail Resorts said in a press release sent out the evening of January 7, 2025.
The agreement will be good through April 2027.
"Everyone looks forward to restoring normal resort operations and moving forward together as one team," the release says. "Until contract ratification, neither party will be accepting media requests.”
The terms of the contract were not released yet.
The announcement comes days after resort COO Deirdra Walsh penned a guest editorial in the Park Record on Sunday asking for the public to stop harassing employees both online and in person.
“What I also know is that the commitment from our working patrol team right now is nothing short of remarkable. It is heartbreaking to see not just them, but all our employees, putting up with relentless harassment online and in person that is absolutely shameful,” Walsh wrote. “They don’t deserve it, and it needs to stop. Nobody wins in a strike.”
The Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA) has also made an attempt to soothe tensions surrounding the ongoing strike. In a recent social media post, they wrote, "We do not condone harassment of any kind."
"We appreciate everyone’s support and share this community’s frustration and deep disappointment with Vail Resorts," the post continued. "We want to urge all of you to direct these feelings at the company, not towards the supervisors and managers left with little choice but to work."
Photo: starlyw/Shutterstock
Ski patrollers at Park City walked out of work and went on an Unfair Labor Practice strike before Christmas. The group cited Vail’s inability to negotiate a fair wage and benefit package. The strike caused a ripple of disruption in the day-to-day operations at Park City during the week following Christmas, which is historically the busiest time of the year at ski resorts.
In the editorial, Walsh apologized for the resort’s failure to open the typical amount of terrain that would otherwise be open at this point in the season.
“This was not the holiday skiing and riding experience anyone wanted, and we know that,” she wrote. “But what we are doing is opening the terrain we can safely open with the people we have each day during the strike.”
Photo: Jason Cameron/Getty Images
In a statement issued on January 7, 2025, resort officials noted that patrol wages have increased more than 50 percent over the past four seasons, far outpacing inflation, to an average of $25 an hour.
A story from Outside published in 2022 stated that a ski patroller named Tommy Pozzi made just $17.38 an hour in 2021. He received a solid raise to $22 an hour a year later, but the minimum living wage in the Salt Lake region was $23.69. While $25 may outpace inflation for now, the average cost of a month’s rent in Park City is $2,127 a month, according to Apartments.com. That is roughly $575 a month ($6,900 a year) more than the national average.
It also should not be lost that ski patrollers are first responders that require three different certifications. A quick search on Indeed shows that an overnight front desk attendant at the Hyatt Place and a stocker at Walmart make comparable starting salaries.
Walsh also called out the patrollers union, saying that by choosing to strike during the holiday, it hurt their fellow employees, skiers and snowboarders, and their neighbors. Walsh wrote that the $2 an hour raise that patrollers are asking more equates to $7, and that additional mediation is scheduled for this week.