03/17/2022
In an important development, an email this week from our CEO Kirsten Lynch acknowledged that the company needs to shift its focus to the needs of employees, including by substantially raising our base wages. This is fantastic news, and we know that the combination of market forces and pushback from Vail Resorts employees (including Breckenridge Instructors) has inspired this positive change.
We are grateful that Vail Resorts, including our local management team, has shown responsiveness to the concerns and suggestions raised by our petition. We are celebrating these welcome first steps with you, and we offer our heartfelt thanks to everyone who signed the petition, showed up at meetings, and talked with peers.
To that end, we hope you will wear your Breckenridge Instructors United stickers with a little extra pride this week, knowing that we are part of the collective effort to advocate for better working conditions. (Need a sticker? We have more — just ask! And better ones are on the way.)
In a spirit of optimism and trust, we believe that our management deserves some time to clarify and follow through on their promises. We are, however, concerned by the ambiguous language in the email around wage compression, and we hope that seasoned instructors will not experience even further wage compression with this raise in the base rate. This was one of the primary concerns that you all expressed in our recent survey. We also know that our mountain town becomes more expensive by the day, and we envision a future where skilled employees can make a career on the mountain.
We continue to believe that a collective voice for instructors is an important way to communicate with the company. To that end, we plan to continue the work of Breckenridge Instructors United to foster communication among like-minded instructors and, as necessary, express our collective views and hold management accountable for its promises. We will continue to assess the wisdom of unionization as we move forward.
For now, we continue to reach out to our fellow instructors, particularly to hear your responses to these proposed changes. We want to know your concerns as we close out this difficult season and head into the next.
So please, come talk to us in the locker room or elsewhere. Or visit our web site at www.breckenridgeinstructors.com and submit a comment.
2021 Petition In December 2021, 120 ski and snowboard instructors delivered a petition to Vail Resorts demanding that they address issues concerning...
