WF would be better without the union

tjf1967 wrote

Flunky when you coming to whiteface?  We miss you.

Maybe March/April, not a very good year for me. Miss you too.

I'm having a hard time understanding how Unions are involved with the poor skiing. As seasonal employees, (that most of the snow makers and lift staff are) there are no rules as far as guaranteeing a full time work.

In the interest of full disclosure, I work for the state, but not at a ski area, although I have in the distant past.

Ski area managers are so good at messing up every marketing and operation decision that it seems in unlikely to me to give the union any credit.

Hope the base stays deep for you guys.

I generally agree with Face4me original comment on this, but will add the following:

First, I personally appreciate the work of the snowmaking crews. It is hard work and can be dangerous (wasn't there a report of a snowmaker dying on the hill?) Working on an icy mountain at night in below 0 temps is not my idea of a cushy job.

The union does not determine where to blow snow mountain management makes that decision.

The weather is more than a little unpredictable. Inversions happen. Temps don't increase or decrease as predicted. I would think this makes it difficult to every snowmaker working every minute of every shift.

The people that repair electric lines after an ice storm  or hurricane are also union people. They work 18+ hours a day in dangerous conditions. Union work rules are negotiated every time the contract comes up. Layoff rules are part on the negotiation.

I am also generally not pro union but don't like using false info to make my case.

tom

Internet is down, posting from my phone.

Original post has a real (if controversial) idea behind it. Good start for discussion. There are several good points in this thread from both sides. Every single one could be made without calling someone an idiot.

If you want to be heard, leave the bird out. Or maybe add a smile after it. Smilies exist is because it's impossible to get tone/intent from text - they are designed to help with that limitation.



Love the idea of a forum as a marketplace for ideas. Never thought of it that way, but IMO its a creative and useful model. Good salesmen don't belittle customers.

Personal note - whatever you guys can do to keep it civil is really appreciated.  NYSB would be boring as hell if everyone agreed. I'm a dreamer -  looking for some kind of middle ground between a tea party and a fist fight.

(via mobile)

I demand a walk off.

I just breezed through this quickly.  The union thing is crazy.  Management would have absolutely no problem laying off workers if they arent needed.  They are blowing snow on WT because its a trail on the mountain that they are trying to open 100%.  One storm and this conversation is moot.  There is a base on WT and it will be there for a while.  Weather isnt black and white.  It changes.  It very easily could have snowed last night.  They dont have a crystal ball.  You move forward and do the best you can.  You seem to have a real axe to grind Ausable skier.

I don't have any axe to grind at all.

I'm neither pro nor con union and my wife is in a union.  I've yet to see one comment telling me how the union makes WF a better place to ski

My point is that WF, Gore and Bell are unlike 99.9% of other US ski areas in that they are union and all the rest are not.  What i had heard is that once WF lays the snowmakers off you can't just easily bring them back so they either have them or they don't regardless of the weather.  The union does affect how WF can schedule employees and that affects how operate and make decisons and ultimately the product.  This topic was to discuss how that affects WF so now that we have had 3 pages of posts disparraging me (excpet for Faces)  - lets either discuss the topic - or not.

I skied Wilmington trail yesterday and i saw first hand how thin and narrow it already is.  The second narrow section was about 15 yards wide due to rocks.  That was before the rain so i'd be pretty suprised if they can operate it once every thing refreezes.  Did anyone else ski it yesterday that has said it will be fine after its poured all night and day???

Face4me had some really good points and managed to do so with out calling me any nasty names.  That was new news to me that WF can't draw water after Feb.  I'm not sure its accurate because the measure of the water flow rate for trout is the mean Feb flow rate and not March.  Plus there is much more run off and the water is higher in March so the drawing for snow making would little effect on the fish.  Would be interesting to try to confirm if this is true and why.

Noah I really like fish way more than birds.    I threw the bird refernce in this morning as a joke so in the words of your buddy TJF to me last week - Lighten up Francis

I also agree with Face in that everyone is in a pissy mode due to this god foresaken weather me included.

ausable skier wrote

My point is that WF, Gore and Bell are unlike 99.9% of other US ski areas in that they are union and all the rest are not.

Apparently, there are a number of resorts that do have unionized ski patrols, though I was not able to find anything that suggested unions for lift operators, snowmaking crews, grooming crews, etc.

ausable skier wrote

That was new news to me that WF can't draw water after Feb.  I'm not sure its accurate because the measure of the water flow rate for trout is the mean Feb flow rate and not March.  Plus there is much more run off and the water is higher in March so the drawing for snow making would little effect on the fish.  Would be interesting to try to confirm if this is true and why.

Once again, I have no way of know whether this is true or not, it's just what I was told. The story, as I heard it, goes that they did not want the ski center "artificially" increasing the amount of runoff in the Spring by piling snow up on the mountain in March, right before temperatures begin to rise.

This could definitely be total BS, though in the 8 years I've been skiing at Whiteface, I don't ever remember them making snow in March, with just a couple of exceptions. Those being the year that they had to move the U.S. Alpine championships here from Alyeska, and the two years that they held the snowboard cross on Boreen in early March. Those could have been exceptions that were granted in order to host those events, or my information could be complete crap!

Why should anyone have to demonstrate that unions "make WF better place to ski"?  It's a false premise; that's not the point of unions.  The effect of unions on the quality of skiing is probably completely neutral.  The OP hasn't even come close to establishing that unions make WF a worse place to ski - other than some wild-assed, agenda driven (and entirely implausible) "theory" based on something he "heard" (BTW, why should Face4Me have to scramble to back-up his claim about the Ausable, which was based on something he "heard" and yet the OP bases his entire theory - and thus this entire thread -  on the same thing?).  Yet he keeps coming back with his call for proof that "unions make WF a better place to ski" - as if the lack of such "proof" even matters.   Don't you people know when you're being played?  This guy wouldn't last one second on a debate team.  He can't even construct a properly debatable point.  This thread is such nonsense

Water intake is based on an established water level that is measured using the weir..  Read the UMP.  No date certain for snow making.

WF could have very easily re-surfaced many trails so going to WT was in no way done just to keep the snowtribe busy..  Lots of us were saying do not go there, keep the guns on this side but they decided to go to WT.  It had zero to do w/ unions or keeping the snowtribe busy...  Quite frankly that was a cheap shot at the people who have made it possible for us to ski at all this season.   Without snow makers, who are pulling down a whopping 8 bucks an hour, we will would have skied pretty much nothing this season.

I would think experienced employees would make for better skiing conditions especially when it comes to making snow.  Decent wage, some benefits would probably help  keep bringing people back.  Nothing worse than constantly having to train people..  Or having to hiring from the bottom of the barrel..  

I'm not union and I feel unions can get in their own way sometimes but I strongly disagree w/ the cheap shot at the snowtribe and mtn ops peeps.

ScottyJack wrote

Water intake is based on an established water level that is measured using the weir..  Read the UMP.  No date certain for snow making.

Is that a fact? Are there no regulations, at any level, which set a date limit? I've actually been very curious about the whole March 1 date thing since I heard the story several years ago. It sounded plausible, and I've done a lot of Google searching over the years to try to find out whether it's true, but I was never able to find anything conclusive one way or the other.

ausable skier wrote

Its pouring in the Daks today and that means the Wilmington Trail that was marginal yesterday will now be toast.  It took over a week of snowmaking to open that trail and God and Ted Blazer only know much money.  While i think that it was not a good decision to blow it management had themselves stuck.  They can't just look at the weather and say lets not make snow now and wait for better weather long term.  They can't just lay off the snowmakers for a week or two and then bring them back because of the union so since snow needed to be made somewhere WT was blown and that budget is now wasted.

Following this argument to its logical conclusion, Whiteface and Gore should have thrown in the towel in mid-November and simply not opened this year.  There hasn't been a favorable window for snowmaking that's been any greater than a few days duration at a time.  The logic of "don't make snow this week because it's gonna be warm next week" equates to cancellation of the 11-12 ski season before it ever started.

Personally, I applaud Bruce, Mike and other mountain managers in the Northeast for aggressively making snow whenever they've been able and to expand trail count.  Those on this board, and the general skiing public, would be complaining loudly if they didn't.

Mountain managers have a lot of constituents that they answer to.  I suspect the unions are pretty far down the list in relative importance to other constituents that influence operations.  We all love to be arm-chair mountain managers and scrutinize every operational decision, what would it be like if the shoe were on the other foot?

SJ

Not once did i diss the folks that make the snow - they are doing an awesome job and that is a difficult job.  The current batch of snowmakers had little or no choice to join the union or not given that its a union shop.

My point all along is that something made WF management decide to blow WT.  You are saying they could have blown elsewhere instead.  My point is that given the crappy forecast maybe they should have saved the budget and not blown all and laid the snowmakers off for a few weeks and waited for better weather then brought them back but you can't do that because of the union rules.   I'm selfish - i want to ski up to easter as usual but without snow making past P-day that is not going to happen the way we are going.  I also think that Face was right marketing probably dictated that WT get open though at 2 plus miles its a huge price to pay to get one trail open.  At Killington they would break that run up into at least 5 trail segments for reporting purposes

You made a good point about retaining talent though I'm not sure you could specifically attribute that to the union since all the non union ski areas seem to not have that issue but I will admit you are on the track i was looking for with this thread.

fact.  based on flow, not date.  

ausable skier wrote

My point is that given the crappy forecast maybe they should have saved the budget and not blown all and laid the snowmakers off for a few weeks and waited for better weather then brought them back but you can't do that because of the union rules.  

Not that it matters because union or non-union they wouldn't be laying these people off in all likelihood but where do you get this?  Earlier you said it was based on "something [you] heard".  Others here have expressed some doubt regarding the veracity of that assertion.  Again, I think the assumption that a non-union mountain would lay these people off and risk not having them available when needed in the near future is slim to none.  I have non-union employees, I pay them a HELL of a lot more than what the snow makers earn, and I would never consider laying them off because it was slow for a couple of weeks.  Nevertheless, how do any of us know your premise is even accurate?  

And I'd still like to know why unions have to prove that they make skiing at WF better.  I suppose an argument could be made that they do but why should they have to make such an argument?  As long as their affect on the quality of skiing is neutral that's good enough.  

nvk497 wrote

There hasn't been a favorable window for snowmaking that's been any greater than a few days duration at a time.  The logic of "don't make snow this week because it's gonna be warm next week" equates to cancellation of the 11-12 ski season before it ever started.

I agree.

nvk497 wrote

Personally, I applaud Bruce, Mike and other mountain managers in the Northeast for aggressively making snow whenever they've been able and to expand trail count.

I totally agree.  Every mountain I follow closely has done this. The mountains I get the most info from ... Gore, Plattekill, Hunter, Whiteface ... have been ON IT.  I remember early season Mike blowing for 6 hours one night - ABOVE THE SADDLE ONLY - snagging the only window available to make progress.

nvk497 wrote

Mountain managers have a lot of constituents that they answer to....  We all love to be arm-chair mountain managers and scrutinize every operational decision, what would it be like if the shoe were on the other foot?

I have to admit I like doing the armchair thing. One thing I have learned - Mike and Bruce want ORDA and the skiing public to be happy.  Managing those two constituents is a big big part of the job.  Those groups have some overlapping goals so it's not impossible. But it ain't easy.

re-surfacing instead of going to WT would have been the better choice.  there was an awesome snowmaking window prior to this thaw.  No wind, single digits and high, high humidity.  They buried WT and lower skyward in days.  Not to mention covering the top of Victoria's in a couple hours...

However the weather models were showing this trend.  And you had a 4000 ticket give away so going to WT was not the best strategy..  Lots of the chevy folks were saying they were not impressed w/ Saturday's firm conditions.  I'd say a whole lot of them had no idea guns were blazing on WT.  The same guns that would have nicely re-surfaced WF and added to our base - getting us a better shot @ Easter.

If WF laid off the snow makers due to the weather change people would have (rightly so) gone nuts.   While I agree going to WT was not strategic, I disagree mightily laying off snowtribe was a better option.  The best option was re-surface, re-surface deep!

How is that in reply to anything I wrote?

you made me double check.  Def not in UMP but need to verify they are not under a DEC water withdrawal permit.

The West Branch of the Ausable River is classified as a wild river under the NYS Wild Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act..  It's amazing any water comes out of that river given the protection wild rivers are provided under this state law....