DISHWASHERS WANTED
Cheap Dollar Draws European Skiers
By Bob Berwyn, 2-11-08
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| Along with the rest of the Rockies, Colorado skiers are enjoying plentiful powder this year, finding freshies nearly every day. Photo by Bob Berwyn. | |
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Winter rolls on in the Colorado Rockies, with a seemingly relentless series of storms providing a dose of fresh powder every few days. Nearly every ski resort in the state is reporting at least a 50-inch base, and some of the most favored areas in the southern mountains are hovering around the 100-inch mark. Wolf Creek leads the pack with 140 inches, while Silverton Mountain claims a 130-inch base.
Conditions couldn’t be better for what appears to be a mini-invasion of skiers and snowboarders from overseas. The Vail Daily’s Ed Stoner reported recently that foreign visitors have increased 23 percent over last year at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone. The buzz is that the weak dollar is the big draw for Europeans, who are getting more for their money by flying across the Atlantic. Check out the Vail Daily story on overseas visits here.
I’ll let you decide whether it’s ironic or not, but about the same time the Vail Daily story was published, the Associated Press reported that ski resorts around the country are scrambling to find workers because of the cap on H-2B visas. Ski resorts and other seasonal businesses use the guest worker program to bring in temporary employess from outside the U.S. for jobs that supposedly can’t be filled by American citizens — although you can bet that, if wages were a bit higher, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Regardless, some resorts appear to be in labor crunch because of the national politics swirling around immigration reform. In past years, Congress passed exemptions to the H-2B cap (set at 66,000). Returning workers weren’t counted against the ceiling. But an attempt to make the exemption a permanent provision in the program failed last year.
According to the Associated Press story that was published in the Aspen Times, Colorado’s 26 ski areas were able to fill most of their 3,000 seasonal slots with the needed H-2B workers, but that some areas were coping with shortfalls. Which raises the question in my mind: If foreign tourists with plenty of cash can afford the trip, but the resorts can’t find the workers from overseas to service them, who is going to wash the dishes and make the beds?
It’s probably not the most pressing question for Colorado backcountry skiers, who are enjoying bountiful powder, but also warily eyeing the tricky snowpack as the most dangerous part of the winter approaches. February is historically the peak month for avalanche deaths in Colorado, and experts with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) say that observations of natural and triggered releases around the state show that the slides are getting bigger and bigger. A couple of days of warmer weather helped settle the snowpack a bit, but the threat of avalanches stepping down into older and weaker layers persists. According to the CAIC’s latest bulletin, recent slides in the Summit County area had fracture lines between three- and 15-feet deep.
The Summit Daily News reported that Summit County lost its long-held and dubious distinction of having the highest number of avalanche deaths as of the end of last season. Pitkin County now has tallied 37 deaths since 1950, one more than Summit County. Avy experts downplayed the statistical blip, focusing instead on the fact that both areas have a tricky continental snowpack and that backcountry skiers in both areas face similar hazards. Check out the Summit Daily News report here.
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Comments
Well, Bob, those jobs are most often held by Hispanic aliens, legal or no (most likely the latter), actually. The overseas visa workers come from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and a handful of South American countries and they do things like serve beer, drive buses, run the lifts and sell retail. I would be surprised if there is a shortage of bedmakers and dishwashers.
My main point is that everyone - whether it's a foreign H-2B worker or a local high school kid, should be paid a living wage, even for the most menial of jobs. I don't know that sustaining corporate profits with a system based on the exploitation of cheap overseas labor is sustainable in the long run.
Maybe it's just the continued reports of a "labor shortage" in mountain resort towns when there is soooo much money flowing into these places that bugs me.
Seems to me that tweaking U.S. immigration policy through Congress to try and make sure there are enough seasonal workers at ski resorts is a bit extreme. I can't speak for the rest of the Rockies, but here in Summit County, there is ALWAYS a shortage of labor for all the types of jobs we mentioned - bus drivers, lift-ops, dishwashers, etc.
For the record, I am personally in favor of a total open borders policy world-wide, with a completely free flow of goods, people, ideas and services. We need to get there with a series of thoughtful and measured steps over the next 20 years recognizing our common humanity. After watching the integration of poor Eastern European countries into the EU, I am convinced this can be done on a global scale with benefits for all mankind in the long run.
Sorry, Bro, the whole right-wing, Islamic terrorist scare tactics don't work with me at all. I'm just not feeling the fear — at all.
I am more afraid - much more afraid - of corporate policies developed right here in this country that are intent on exploiting people and natural resources with no regard for the consequences. In contrast to some, I won't lightly throw the word "terrorism" into the discussion, but I think some of the tactics used by the establishment to advance a corporate agenda come close to meeting the definition of the word, as in creating a climate of fear to change government policies and public opinion. The only thing lacking is the direct physical violence, thank goodness.
I don't advocate free passage for anyone who breaks the laws of this or any other country, or who travels with the intention of harming others. The problem with trying to stop everybody is that the net is cast too wide, making it much harder to catch the really bad guys, IMO.
I like your avy idea, though!
Love you too!