Park City will mark Miners Day on Monday, a celebration of the workers who toiled in the silver-mining industry that ruled the local economy for decades and employed generations of workers, many of them sent underground for hours a day in awful conditions.
The rest of the nation, of course, sees Monday as Labor Day, a holiday to honor America’s workforce.
Although Monday will be a day for gatherings with friends and families, celebrations and frolicking in the mountains in Park City, this is a year when people should take time to understand the meaning of the holiday and the critical importance of the rank-and-file workers of the community.
The workforce of the Park City area, like many other places, has been through a whipsaw in the past two-plus years. Unemployment in the Park City area soared to above 20% in the early stages of the novel coronavirus pandemic before steadily falling to under 2% this summer.
With the comeback, there have been worker shortages in the last year, most notably in the broad tourism industry of Park City. A lack of employees during the last winter, in many ways, drove some of the complaints throughout the course of the 2021-2022 ski season, when Park City seemed to be overrun by the visitors. Numerous businesses, plainly, did not appear to be staffed at a level that was needed to provide the necessary services to the crowds. Just about everyone suffered.
Labor Day moves Park City into the fall shoulder season, and it also arrives at a time when the tourism industry is readying for the ski season. Stores stock up with wintertime products, upgrades and repairs are made to businesses and, crucially, owners and managers recruit a staff for the ski season.
The winter recruitment this year will be especially notable. The community will learn whether the difficulty in hiring during the most recent ski season was an aberration or whether it was the start of a trend toward the workforce demanding better – be it in pay, hours or working conditions. The owners and managers need to understand hiring in the coming months could again be a challenge and then adjust accordingly.
Miners Day in Park City celebrates the workers of the past. But at the same time, Labor Day in Park City must honor the workers of today.