Saving Money with Living Wages

 

We drove over to the Canyons on a magnificent Tuesday and although the traffic wasn’t too bad, the parking lot was an absolute glacier skating rink with hummocks and seracs because during the last storm they didn’t plow it. This was their Entry Statement?  Parking was a free-for-all for pedestrians and cars, in the mud with only three uninterested parking attendants available.  They needed ten, I thought, but I guess they were saving money. 

We got on the mountain, and it was glorious.  It was a bluebird day and the grooming was magnificent.  The only thing was that there was not enough of it.  Only one or two runs were groomed off every lift and they got skied off quickly from the focus.  I thought they might be saving the snow from overworking it but we were in the middle of another great storm cycle so I concluded that they must be saving money.  

There used to be a variety of groomed runs to choose from on each lift, as recently as last year, when they recovered nicely from the 2020 Covid year debacle of minimum wage and supply chain limitations that closed slopes, lifts and restaurants.  I was told that they can’t find enough snow groomers and I wondered how that could be when grooming is one of the coolest jobs on the mountain, besides throwing bombs, if you can make enough money to eat.  Then I realized that with near zero unemployment, it’s not an employee problem, it’s a wage issue.  No one wants live in the parking lot in their VW van or drive from Nephi to work at night for $20 an hour.  If they paid a living-wage there would be a line of drivers all the way to Heber to help them groom. 

A living wage might be classified as enough money where you wouldn’t need essential worker assisted housing to survive, which is defined at about $80,000 a year in Park City, or about $40 an hour.  Hiring roughly 500 groomers companywide at that rate would cost them less than 1% of their Season Pass income.  A small price to pay for excellence.  Their flagship mountains in Colorado have plenty of groomers, plows, parking lot attendants and lift operators.   What are we, the red headed stepchild, the poor little bastard?  

Deidra and our local mountain management team have done well with what they get but we are clearly not a corporate priority. Then I realized that the company and shareholders don’t care about the ‘product’ once they get our money in September.  It’s like size-flation where you get a smaller box of cereal each year for the same price.  It made me wonder what the product was that we agreed upon and contracted for in September.  Was it the outstanding 2022 ski season or the horrid 2020?  Snow helps but there is a big difference.  You never know, they never say.  Or is it OK for our mountain to be demoted again from Top 10 to Top 50 in the USA rankings.  That affects everyone.   

So, I went in to get a cup of coffee to think about this and I gave the cashier a twenty.  He said we don’t take cash, only credit cards or your Mountain Charge Account, whatever that is.  I looked at him and he looked at me.  I finally stuffed the twenty in his shirt pocket saying ‘trickle-down, stick it to the man’ and we both laughed.  On the way out of the parking lot that day I was swallowed up by a bone crushing, Moon size crater that has been there for 9 years.  Nice Exit statement, I thought, I guess they are saving money.