Erik Anderson was deployed as an aircraft electrician in the Iraq War and has piloted undersea robots to fix deepwater oil drills. But his current job might be the most dangerous yet, he said.
As a chairlift mechanic at Mt. Bachelor, Anderson is part of a crew that scales icy towers in whipping winds to work on sensors and equipment high above the ground, keeping lifts spinning for thousands of skiers and snowboarders.
Better working conditions, wages and benefits are all reasons why the mechanics who keep the lifts spinning at Mt. Bachelor are pushing to unionize.
“People look at a ski resort and they think of a large playground, a place to spend a day or a weekend having a lot of fun,” Anderson told the Source. “What a lot of folks don’t know is it takes an amazing amount of sweat and guts to get the thing started in the morning.”
Nearly all of Mt. Bachelor’s 13 lift technicians backed a petition to unionize, filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday, according to organizers. That’s the first step on a path to becoming organized labor at the Oregon ski area, as a growing number of mountain workers across the West opt to unionize in the face of rising costs of living, relatively low pay and, sometimes, extreme working conditions.
The group of technicians will need to approve of the union in a vote held by the national labor board. That would give Mt. Bachelor’s lift mechanics the power to collectively negotiate with the second-largest employer in the Central Oregon region.
Long the crown jewel of Central Oregon’s outdoor recreation industry, Mt. Bachelor is one of seven mountain resorts owned by POWDR, an outdoor adventure giant based in Park City, Utah. The mountain tops out at about 1,300 employees during peak winter season.
In a statement, Mt. Bachelor President and General Manager John Merriman said the ski area is aware of the technicians’ move to unionize.
“We respect our employees’ right to decide whether they wish to be represented by a union,” Merriman wrote. “We believe that maintaining our current relationship, without third-party representation, is in the best interest of our team and operations. We remain committed to open communication, supporting our employees, and preparing the mountain for the upcoming ski season.”
Lift mechanics arrive at the mountain around 5 am to begin deicing lifts in the dark and get them spinning before guests arrive. They’re also responsible for rebuilding the grips where chairs attach to the cable that hauls them up the mountain.
Several lift technicians are new at Mt. Bachelor this season, while others have been there for nearly two decades, Anderson said.
Nick Henry, a lift technician of three years at Mt. Bachelor, said the group is pushing to unionize to “promote the safety, fair compensation and long-term success of mechanics at Mt. Bachelor.”
Mt. Bachelor’s lift technicians are organizing under United Mountain Workers, which already represents more than 1,100 ski industry workers across Colorado, Utah, Montana and Washington. It’s part of a larger parent union called Communication Workers of America, which represents workers in a broad swath of sectors like health care, news media and higher education.
Ryan Dineen, a ski patroller in Breckenridge, Colorado and union organizer, said the number of unionized ski area workers has “grown exponentially” since the pandemic, when the popularity of outdoor recreation surged. The ski industry has reacted “quite negatively” to the movement, Dineen said.
Dineen helped organize ski patrollers at Eldora, another POWDR-owned mountain in Nederland, Colorado, unionize in 2024. (There is another parallel to Bend: Nederland is making a push to buy the ski area from POWDR, similar to the grassroots nonprofit effort to buy Mt. Bachelor when POWDR put it up for sale in 2024. That ended when the company took Mt. Bachelor off the market.)
The unionizing effort at Mt. Bachelor is unique not only because it’s the first in Oregon, but because it’s the first time a ski area’s lift technicians have moved to unionize at a mountain where ski patrollers haven’t already done so, Dineen said.
Lift maintenance at Mt. Bachelor is a different animal from other resorts, Anderson said. The exposed volcano gets blasted with moisture, caking on ice that can take hours to remove.
Mt. Bachelor officials and lift technicians interviewed by the Source declined to provide information about how much they make. Wages for a current posting for a lift maintenance mechanic at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl are between $24.50 and $31.50 an hour, which is roughly between $50,000 and $65,000 per year. Anderson said the starting wage for lift technicians at Mt. Bachelor doesn’t come close to covering the cost of rent in Bend, where individuals need a $72,000 salary to avoid becoming “cost-burdened” by housing, according to a 2025 report.
Henry, 30, said “it’s never been easy” to find housing as a young adult. A former structural welder, Henry drove for Door Dash to make extra income on the side when he was first hired at the mountain three years ago, he said.
“For us, it’s always about striving for better,” Henry said. “We want to improve not only ourselves as mechanics, but the mechanics that will come after us.”
Anderson said he’s also hoping to create a more robust safety training process for mechanics working high above the ground.
“It’s a dangerous and demanding job,” Anderson said. “Things would be a lot more beneficial for us and for POWDR if we had a seat at the table and were able to explain ourselves and our situation as more equals.”
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