The cost of lift tickets at Telluride will rise if the southern Colorado resort meets its ski patroller union’s demand for higher wages, owner Chuck Horning said Thursday in a frank email to local businesses.
The union, the Telluride Professional Ski Patrollers Association, has been negotiating with the resort for months as it seeks to secure better pay and other benefits to bolster retention in its workforce. The action follows that of similar ski patrol unions in Colorado and other states, which have been arguing that their specialized skills deserve more money.
“If the community believes we should meet the union’s demands — even if we believe they are unreasonable — there is only one way to do it is (sic) to pass the entire cost to lift tickets and season pass prices,” the Horning’s email stated. He added that if Telluride were to “cave in,” it would also affect other employees and small businesses.
Horning, who has had a fraught relationship with the local community, also alleged ski patrol members have misrepresented their plight and distorted the nature of their employment.
“This is not healthy negotiation — it is coercion, and it places the entire community at risk,” he wrote.
Horning’s communication is the latest in a series of offensive moves by the resort, which is the region’s largest employer, as it prepares for a potential patrollers’ strike — something that could happen this month. The contentious negotiations, which overlapped Telluride’s opening day on Dec. 6, have been cause for concern for area businesses.
But the resort’s rhetoric is “par for the course” in union bargaining battles, said Colette Perold, assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado.
“Horning’s message is a typical anti-union script: claim financial scarcity, try to pit different groups of workers against each other, and stoke tensions between the community and the workers,” Perold said by email. “It looks defensive, like he thinks the company doesn’t have control of the narrative. From this message alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an overwhelming feeling in Telluride that the community is on the side of the patrollers.”
This week, 99% of patrollers voted to reject what the company called its “last, best and final” offer, said union president Graham Hoffman. “Membership was unequivocally clear: that’s not good enough,” he said.
Given the technical skills and training required for the job, the union wants to secure close to $30 an hour base pay for its 70-plus members.
Patrollers are paid based on skill level and experience. For instance, a patroller entering their second year currently receives $21.28 per hour, while a five- to 10-year patroller gets, on average, $25.40. The union is asking that those pay grades rise to $27 and $30, respectively. The resort’s final offer, however, was $24 and $27.97, according to the union.
By comparison, a local hotel has a job listing for a line cook that pays $22 to $24 per hour.
Speaking to the Mountain Village Town Council Thursday night, union leadership estimated the difference between its ask and the company’s offer, cumulatively, at roughly $115,000. (Earlier this week, a resort spokesperson pegged the difference at less than $100,000.)
Telluride’s avalanche danger and snowpack are complex, which is why retention on the patrol force is important, the union said. It’s also already one of the pricier places to ski. A daily lift ticket costs anywhere from $164 to $293, depending on demand and the time of season, a practice known as dynamic pricing. A season pass costs $3,150.
Though the union authorized a strike in November, Hoffman said it hopes to reach a resolution without a work stoppage and that the union is still willing to continue negotiations.
“We find this to be antagonistic, to paint us to be the inflexible ones here,” he said. “We’ve never set a hard deadline, but this whole ‘take it or leave it’ is coming from them, not us.”
