has been launched against Vail Resorts after guests to Utah’s Park City Mountain saw their holiday trips impacted by the recent ski patrol strike that closed swaths of terrain and led to hours-long lift lines.
The primary plaintiff, Illinois man Christopher Basaillon, is suing on behalf of anyone who purchased a Park City Mountain lift ticket over the duration of the strike, from Dec. 27 through Jan. 8. The suit claimed the Whistler Blackcomb parent company “intentionally and willfully deceived hundreds of thousands of consumers” by failing to disclose the labour action and its potential impacts.
The suit goes on to say that only 16 per cent of the mountain’s terrain was open during the nearly two-week strike, leading to lift lines up to three hours long. Basaillon said in the suit he spent more than US$15,000 on the ski trip for his family of five, who ended up only being able to ski less than 10 runs over the duration of their weeklong vacation.
“Because Vail Resorts failed to disclose the strike and resultant conditions on Park City’s operations, what was expected to be a dream vacation for thousands of families, at the expense of tens of thousands of dollars per family, quickly turned into a colossal nightmare,” the suit read.
The suit, filed in a Utah U.S. District Court, also contended Vail Resorts should have seen the strike coming as early as Dec. 16, when the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association began filing unfair labour practice charges against the company over delays in contract negotiations, which began in April 2024.
The 204 unionized ski patrollers and mountain safety staff voted to authorize the strike on Dec. 14, before walking off the job two weeks later, reportedly leaving as few as 20 mountain safety personnel on the mountain. The union said Vail Resorts brought in about 30 replacement patrollers from other resorts.
The job action caused chaos on-mountain and “confusion and disruption” around town, according to a joint statement from Mayor Nann Worel and Park City council that called on Vail Resorts to immediately end the strike. There were also reports of guests ducking ropes to ski closed runs, contributing to mounting safety concerns during the two-week labour action.
Wednesday, Jan. 8 when union members voted to ratify a new contract.
At times, Vail Resorts acknowledged the strike’s impacts on , but those posts were subsequently deleted and mentions of the job action removed, . The radio station reported that, by the job action’s second week, resort officials issued statements acknowledging the effect on guests’ experience. Park City Mountain also removed the metric on its website indicating the percentage of skiable terrain that was open, KPCW reported. After the strike concluded, Vail Resorts Mountain Division President Bill Rock and thanked staff who helped to keep the resort open over the busy holiday period.
Employees at Whistler Blackcomb (WB) have attempted to organize at various times, without success. In 2017, a small group of Snow School instructors began , the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union Local 1518, after they said talks with Vail Resorts about improved compensation and benefits led nowhere. In 2020, Whistler Blackcomb snowmakers’ union ambitions after B.C.’s Labour Relations Board (LRB) dismissed an application, submitted by the UFCW, to recognize 28 snowmaking department staff as a collective bargaining unit. Ultimately, the labour board found snowmakers’ shared duties with other departments made them inappropriate for bargaining. A subsequent UFCW application to have the decision reconsidered was dismissed in early 2021.
Since dubbed the Whistler Workers Alliance, the group initially targeted Whistler Blackcomb’s entire 4,000-plus workforce for organizing, lofty ambitions given the size and transient nature of the ski resort’s employee base. The support of at least half of WB’s bargaining unit (meaning non-managerial staff) would be required to unionize.
“It’s a tough labour force to unionize because many of them are only here for short periods of time,” UBC professor Craig Riddell, who specializes in labour economics and relations, told Pique in February 2021.
"Think of joining a union like an investment: You're putting in time and effort at the beginning, and you may end up having to go on strike to get the initial contract you want, and it presumably pays off in the future. But if you're only involved in that activity for a year or two, that may not be worth it."
It’s also unlikely the LRB would recognize WB’s entire workforce as a single bargaining unit, which it bases on several criteria, including similarity in skills and working conditions. A union push from a smaller potential bargaining unit like, say, ski patrol, would presumably have a more realistic chance of organizing.
Pique has requested comment from UFCW 1518 and members of Whistler Blackcomb’s ski patrol and will update this story if we hear back.
