PARK CITY, Utah — At the Miners Day Parade held on Monday, the workers who put this town on the map received their due.
Park City’s mining heritage was remembered with parade goers wearing hard hats and carrying pickaxes. Another icon of the American worker — one in a union — is tougher and tougher to find in Utah.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Utah had 122,000 union workers in 2024. That was 12,000 lower than the year before — a significant decline in a state that was already near the bottom in rate of union membership.
“We would have expected to see a growth in union membership in 2024,” said Eunice Han, an associate professor of economics at the University of Utah,“but we actually saw a little bit of a decline.”
Han noted that Utah has added jobs in fields that typically go hand in hand with union cards, including construction and teaching. Han says anti-union laws passed by the Utah Legislature, including attempts to ban collective bargaining for public sector workers.
“From [employers’] perspective,” Han said, “unions are hurting the economy because they are taking away from the company’s profit.
“But from the workers’ perspective, higher salaries, higher wages, it can go back to the economy and then you actually have a chain reaction and actually boost the economy.”
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Max Magill and the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association marched in the Miners Day Parade months after they went on strike and won a new contract from Vail Resorts. Magill on Monday said his wages have more than tripled in 11 years, and he credited the strike with producing higher wages across the ski industry.
“We’ve heard from other patrollers,” Magill said, “mostly thanking us, from non-union resorts because they’ve seen their wages increase as a result of their resorts needing to be competitive with ours.”
“This year,” Magill said, “we are appreciating our community more than ever. They donated so much money to our strike fund, and we were able to pay our patrollers for being on the picket line.”
Heidi Matthews and other teachers belonging to the Park City Education Association cheered on the parade marchers. Matthews said some teachers don’t want to join the union because it would mean paying part of their income toward dues.
“The other” reason, Matthews said, “is there’s a sense that the union or association are there for protection and they’re not going to need us.”
Those teachers don’t consider, Matthews said, that some accusations are unfounded and they may need someone to defend them.