When Vail Resorts added Stevens Pass to its empire, ski patrollers feared becoming fungible parts in a corporate machine. So they organized.
…it grated in 2018, when Stevens Pass Resort became another asset in the fast-expanding empire of Vail Resorts, an industry titan worth more than $8 billion — underscoring the big money and power dynamics governing even this modest and traditionally easygoing workplace. Many patrollers wanted to be treated, and compensated, as professionals, not fungible parts in a corporate machine. The unionization effort they commenced — learning as they went — wasn’t just about sustainable wages, but about demanding a voice to speak to management as co-equal stakeholders in their resort.