One thing that I noticed during my sojourn in Vail Valley was that the ski resorts seem to have a lot of volunteer labor. Beaver Creek has greeters everywhere to answer questions, hand out tissues, hand out postcards, etc. One volunteer said that she does it for the annual pass. I asked “How often do you ski?” and she replied that she doesn’t ski at all, but likes the ride the lifts in the summer for hiking. Presumably this relationship is mutually satisfactory but a mutually satisfactory employment relationship can give rise to a profitable lawsuit.
I found Winter Park’s ad for ski patrol volunteers, for example. The volunteer must work for 17 days and pay $90. In exchange he or she receives an annual ski pass that retails for $400-600. If a “day” is 8 hours, that’s as little as $2.25 per hour in net compensation and the government did not receive Social Security or Medicare payroll taxes on this wage.
Why isn’t ski country also an employment litigator’s paradise?
[Despite state laws that absolve ski resort operators from most liability on the “you were falling down a goddamn mountain” theory, a prominent skilaw.com billboard on I-70 shows that litigation and skiing can be mixed.]
The difference between $2.25 and minimum wage over 17 days doesn’t amount to much. I can’t see lawyers salivating over the prospect of going to court so that they could get 1/3 of that sum.
Ski patrol is getting paid to socialize with other ski fanatics and ski. There may also be free training (avalanche rescue or CPR for example), “status”, etc…involved.
I’m not a lawyer but I think you make a very good point. It reminds me of the Asterix character “Ekonimikrisis” whose trading galley was staffed by “rowing vacationers” who did not read the find print of the travel brochure.
http://www.asterix.com/the-a-to-z-of-asterix/characters/ekonomikrisis.html
No money. Those “employees” make little money even if they were to get paid so no lawyer cares. See here.
http://www.powder.com/stories/features/banding-together/#Yy378hw8AKmA8K4f.97
Even when people die inside ski areas very few collect. See here.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25132586/widow-loses-lawsuit-over-husbands-ski-death
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/03/09/lawsuits-filed-over-ski-accidents-at-heavenly-mountain-resort/
Bill: Thanks for the references. If the average pay for a ski patroller is $10/hour as the article says at least some resorts must be paying a lot more than the examples I found. (Or maybe the BLS doesn’t count “ski patrol volunteers” as “ski patrollers”.)
This does seem like an awesome area for unionization. Just let the employer try to move the mountain to Mexico!
Uber drivers don’t make a lot of money and yet lawyers are presumably profiting (or hoping to profit) from filing lawsuits on their behalf. See http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/6/9681358/uber-class-action-lawsuit-driver-trial-date for example.
The ski patrollers tried to organize at Heavenly back in 2000ish as I recall. Some people got layed off or not rehired and that effort was voted out. Mountain management is heavily represented with older guys who used to be ski patrol so they understand the work but want to avoid the unions at all costs. see below.
http://ski-patrol.net/wordpress/ski-patrol-unions-isolated-occurrences-or-the-latest-trend/
http://archive.bangordailynews.com/2001/03/03/ski-patrol-approves-union-killington-workers-seek-more-money/
The major reason I see for the low pay and tons of volunteers all over ski country is the legacy of high cost season passes. Back when ski mountains all charged $1200 to $1600 for a season pass. So not very many people (including locals) bought season passes. Instead locals volunteered part time for various jobs to get a season pass that let them ski for free. Then all that changed in 2004ish when Vail figured out they were making more $$ selling mountain food and drinks and lowered the season pass to $400ish to get more food customers.
Resorts have pro patrollers and volunteer patrollers. Pros are full-timers and are paid as such. Volunteers are people who have a full-time job, but want to ski every weekend, and help people while they’re doing it. With season passes in Colorado being so inexpensive, I bet it’s harder these days to recruit volunteer patrollers. Here on the east, where passes are at least twice as much and have black-out days around the holidays, it makes more economic sense.
Regardless, I would imagine there are laws against signing up to volunteer, then starting litigation because you’re not getting paid enough at your volunteer job.
Laws against suing after volunteering? Apparently not! See http://www.buckleybeal.com/Law-Blog/2013/August/Unpaid-Volunteer-Files-Unpaid-Wage-Lawsuit-Again.aspx (covered in http://www.forbes.com/sites/theemploymentbeat/2013/09/13/dont-volunteer-to-pay-your-volunteers%E2%80%BC/#8c391d5741ac )
Also http://www.classaction.org/insomniac-live-nation-volunteers
And http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2014/10/14/lawsuit-alleges-cgi-exploited-race-volunteers#.VtxCTpwrJmA