Keystone ski patrollers are ready to take a second run at forming a union, marking yet another group in the resort industry seeking collective bargaining.
“We have a hard time finding housing and paying for housing for a lot of us, housing costs us an entire paycheck,” said Cory Cavegn, who has been a Keystone patroller for four years. “We’ve seen quite a few other patrols get into the union … and it’s pretty apparent that patrollers with the same amount of tenure and training are receiving better compensation at those other resorts.”
As home prices soar in ski towns, more resort workers are turning toward collective bargaining to negotiate higher wages and better benefits.
So far this winter ski patrols at five resorts in the West have announced plans to join unionized patrollers at 10 other resorts and lift mechanics at two ski areas.
In the past couple years, patrollers at Big Sky in Montana, Breckenridge, Loveland and Purgatory have voted to unionize. Lift mechanics at Park City in Utah and Crested Butte Mountain Resort also have unionized in the past two years. All are part of the the 700-member United Professional Ski Patrols of America. Patrollers at Aspen-Snowmass, Crested Butte, Park City, Steamboat, Telluride and Stevens Pass in Washington have been in unions for many years.
Keystone’s 93 ski patrollers on March 1 filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. Keystone patrollers voted in 2021 on a union, with the effort failing by a single vote. In October, patrollers at Eldora Mountain Resort announced plans to hold a union vote. Patrollers at Whitefish ski area in Montana voted 24-1 this week to form a union. Alterra Mountain Co.’s Palisades Tahoe in California and Solitude in Utah have filed petitions to form a union. All cite a need for increased pay to match spiking housing and living costs in mountain towns.
The 2021 union vote at Keystone fell short, Cavegn said, because senior patrollers worried about the effectiveness of a new union.
“Seeing that it seems to be going well for other patrols, we figured it was time to try this again and see where we get with it this time,” Cavegn said.
Keystone is owned by Vail Resorts, the largest resort operator in North America with 37 ski areas, including five in Colorado. Patrollers at its Breckenridge, Crested Butte and Park City ski areas are unionized. In 2022, the company announced it was investing $175 million a year in its workforce, with pay climbing to $20 an hour for new hires and $21 for first-year ski patrollers.
While the investment spiked starting wages — up from around $12 an hour at some resorts — longtime workers did not see similar increases. That’s called “wage compression,” when veterans are earning only a little bit more than first-year employees. And wage compression can savage morale. Many patrols are seeing veterans leave to seek better paying work, which can challenge the mentoring process needed to develop knowledgeable mountain patrols.
“A first-year lift op is making the same as fifth- and sixth-year patrollers and that is frustrating,” Cavegn said. “A lot of us make it work with side hustles and side jobs or we live in our vans and campers. That’s how we make it work because we love our job and want to be able to keep doing it despite all these cost-of-living increases.”
Chris Sorensen, the general manager at Keystone, said in an emailed statement that wages for ski patrollers at the ski area have climbed 49% in the past five years on top of the increased investment benefits, mental health resources and training opportunities.
“While we respect our employees’ right to seek to organize, we genuinely believe that the best way to foster an inclusive culture where all employees feel empowered and heard is to have a direct, open relationship,” Sorensen said. “We will continue to do the right thing for our team members, regardless of a union.”
Some patrollers have negotiated new contracts
The Breckenridge patrol last year negotiated a new contract with Vail Resorts that increases pay for veterans. Ryan Dineen is a ski patroller at Breckenridge and president of that union who helps resort workers organize under the Communications Workers of America, Local 7781. He said contract gains are encouraging patrollers at many other resorts to advocate for change and look at collective bargaining as a lever for better pay, benefits and working conditions.
“We have seen over the last couple months that the two years of work by the local to really mobilize the ski industry as best we can is starting to pay off,” Dineen said. “We are constantly having conversations with patrols and lift mechanics around the country.”
The growing unionization of resort workers arrives as ski resort operators thrive. Visitation to U.S. and Colorado ski resorts has set records in recent years. Vail Resorts last year reported $835 million in earnings on $2.9 billion in revenue. Alterra Mountain Co. recently raised $3 billion in new investments to pay back thel investors who launched the company in 2018.
And the outdoor recreation economy reported $1.1 trillion in spending in 2022, making it one of the nation’s most vibrant rural economic engines. But wages for outdoor recreation workers have not risen along the industry’s meteoric rise. In Colorado, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the mean wage for recreation workers in 2022 was $37,340 or $17.95 an hour.
In Colorado, a Colorado Sun analysis found that workers filed 143 union petitions with the National Labor Relations Board between Jan. 1, 2020 and Feb. 29, 2024. There have been 96 elections in that period and 63 have resulted in unionization.
Resort workers outpace that statewide trend, with Keystone patrollers the only group who has recently rejected unionization.
“The whole idea of getting paid in fun is not going to work anymore,” Dineen said. “The industry is not going to voluntarily change so we need to advocate and push for that change.”