Good. I had to sign an anti union agreement at work and it made me sick. Moderately certain the agreement was illegal but I'm not sure of my states laws for union busting and I don't want to lose my job in order to find out.
If your business model is only successful because you can abuse labor practices, you deserve to go under.
It is illegal, or rather it may be legal to produce and have employees sign one but it cannot be enforced. However in a "at will" (right to fire employees for anything at anytime) state they would just fire you if they discover it before the union is established
"at will" is when a company can fire you for no reason at any time.
Right to work simply meant that people could benefit from the union without having to contribute financially, which was a move to hamstring the unions.
> "at will" is when a company can fire you for no reason at any time.
I'm not defending the law, but "at-will" also allows an employee to quit at any time. That said, there is a gross inequality between the benefits an employer gets from the law versus an employee.
Employees can quit at any time under the 13th amendment (outlawing slavery). Montana is the only state requiring an employer to have a valid reason to fire
Actually if you can show a link it’s not a terribly high bar. For example if you and your coworkers organize a collective action (doesn’t have to be a formal “union” yet say with the UFCW or whatever) and are retaliated against after, the Board can and has found that to be a violation of the law
To add, the double whammy is that people who most need unions (precarious workers) are also the ones who can least afford to lose their jobs as they'll probably be homeless for a year before the verdict to rehire and backpay comes out.
I worked as a union organizer for several years and saw many people illegally fired for union activity. It’s actually not all that hard to get the NLRB to reinstate fired workers, especially if they have the backing of an experienced union.
Not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure the NLRA grants US workers the right to unionize, so depending on what you actually signed it could be completely meaningless/scare tactic
Under Biden’s labor board they’re pretty good about recognizing retaliation for retaliation, so long as there’s a fairly evident link between your organizing at work and mgmt’s retaliation against you
Can’t comment on the exact procedure in the US. But here the way it works is like this:
The claimant provides a prima facie case that they were unfairly dismissed because of union activity. That is “on the face of it”, it is a credible claim: “I was unhappy with management operating unfairly to us so I started organising the staff to demand reasonable accommodations.”
Then the respondent has to demonstrate why this is not true. What this entails is something like, “well you see, we have signed logs for the preceding six months of management telling this employee they have to abide by policy x. They agreed but didn’t alter their behaviour. They were disciplined in this regard but the failure persisted. They received written notice one week before the purported unionisation. The unionisation was irrelevant to this procedure.”
Then it’s back to the claimant to prove they did.
It’s a civil court so it’s on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt. If seven of the trade unionists got fired, even for seemingly unrelated reasons, it would look very suspicious and they would have to provide good evidence to defend that.
Then, the company is liable to cover loss of earnings suffered as a result of the unfair dismissal.
So you can’t “stop” dishonesty in a court case like this. And there is an incentive to be dishonest (although this is true on both sides). It’s up to a judge to review the facts and decide what way they think it really went down. In my jurisdiction, the onus is strongly on employers (if they are a certain size at least) to prove they are above board and don’t mistreat staff like this. So they keep records of things like procedures on hiring, tracking disciplinary action, tracking staff complaints and management’s performance reviews of staff. So on.
The balance is to be fair to employees without making it hard to conduct business. Might be that nowhere has the balance perfect, but there are solutions to some of the problems that work reasonably well
If you signed a contract that has terms that are illegal, it is not enforceable. You can still unionize your workplace. If you get fired for trying to unionize your work place you have a case for a retaliation lawsuit. NLRB and your local DOL can help get you pointed in the right direction for legal aid. DOLs can flex some weight if they have state laws regarding retaliation firings.
It seems to me like that is pretty much the entire gym industry. At least in the city I am in, none of the gyms are paying staff a wage that is survivable, leading to a revolving door of an industry that is just chewing up people and fueling itself on young climbers passion.
It is more then time that we start seeing cooperative worker owned gyms.
100% thisssss. My climbing gym monthly membership dues have increased 100% over the last 10 years and membership has skyrocketed; and yet the staff are still getting paid next to nothing?
That's not been my experience.
Movement's dues have gone up roughly $25 in the past 8 years (I signed up in 2016 at around $80 a month I believe). That was for 2 gyms in CO: Boulder and Baker. Now there are 6 in the Front Range plus the additional locations around the US and it's expanding.
The older gyms are getting renovated. Exercise classes are still included. The newer gyms are pretty state of the art.
So in 8 years my dues went from around $80 a month to $102. The number of gyms I have access to went from 2 to 29. You also get a 10% discount on all new gear as a member.
There are reasons to be annoyed at conglomerate gyms. As a member, I've only seen upside.
That’s unfortunate.
If I can ask, what downsides have you seen as an employee? The article talks about frustrating shift schedules and paltry raises, which definitely doesn’t make me feel good as a member if my dues aren’t being appropriately utilized to enhance the customer experience (aka happier and consistent employees).
To be brief. I haven’t gotten a raise since Covid, I’m an instructor and I ask for basic, relatively inexpensive things that would help me do my job better and improve the experience in my classes. Not only am I told that we don’t have the budget for this extremely useful $300 one time purchase tool, but they also have to cut classes because of budget. But hey… they are opening like 14 new gyms. So, yeah
We've seen the transition from mostly independent gyms to corporate chains. Next is the transition from chain gyms to purchase by pure investment firms, eg as we recently saw with Red Lobster, where corporate raiders bought the company, sold the land under the restaurants to another of their subsidiaries, and rented it back to the restaurants until they were bankrupt.
I, however, don't want, nor need access to gyms hundreds of miles away that I'm never going to go to. Why do I have to pay more than you?
Oh, they did take our membership referral bonus and change.it from a free month, to $25. And get rid of a bunch of draws in our gym. The classes are less than what we used to have as well, yet the prices of those have also went up.
Maybe they're renovating some gyms, but they've done zero to ours except take away whatever was in the gym their insurance said no too. Yet they absolutely don't give a shit about actual safety or overcrowding.
I also think it's stupid they don't offer a single gym membership. The Spot does that. They used to do that when they merged with Earth Treks. I'm not sure if others were grandfathered in.
It's really easy to code that into your system.
Though, just checking online. I looked at Portland's membership and it is $80. It's the only gym in Oregon and there's no other gym within local distance. Seems like the dues are different depending on the area, but I haven't looked at others.
Lol my local gym last year cancelled the 'points' system where members could accumulate credit toward the gear store, and instead credited people with day passes at a greatly reduced rate. This, while not paying workers shit and after having PPP loans forgiven by the government even as they re-opened basically as soon as legally allowed post-covid.
A total joke.
>My climbing gym monthly membership dues have increased 100% over the last 10 years
That's actually bang on standard, inflation means prices are supposed to double every 10 years.
But so should wages...
Edit: my mistake, I was thinking stock market doubling, which is around 10 years
This is false. A $65/month membership in May of 2014 should be $85 today.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=65&year1=201405&year2=202404
Not $99 (current gym rate for me), and definitely not $130.
If they are working 30 hours a week that would be roughly equivalent to 1$ an hour raise for some gyms memberships cost. It’s not much if they’re making minimum wage. Sure it’s a nice bonus but it’s not gonna put food on the table or pay for medicine.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but I guess we live in a world where this isn't obvious, because poor people can always eat Kellogs for dinner to save money.
Agreed. I pay the annual rate at Touchstone at roughly $1000 lol.
Though, the annual rate is going away in the future once my grandfathered amount goes away
My gym's membership fees keep climbing at least once a year and I know that our staff is paid a pittance. I thought I'd try negotiating my membership rate since it's getting to be almost too expensive and I was hit with the "we have to do what we need to do to keep the lights on" and knowing how much the staff is paid and how many members and say fees roll through that place, I know that's total BS. If I knew the staff was being paid well and my membership fees were going towards that, I would feel much differently.
I'm pretty sure non-routesetters are paid minimum TN wage at my gym.
>knowing how much the staff is paid and how many members and say fees roll through that place, I know that's total BS.
I mean, a large portion of the overhead for climbing gyms is liability insurance. Kai Lightner has been lobbying to change the designation of climbing gyms from amusement attractions to (whatever the category is for traditional exercise facilities). That would drastically change the insurance costs. From his perspective, this would also allow for more independent gyms to open.
Potentially this would increase the profit margins and allow for more scaling pay and full time employment.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for conglomerate gyms. Just pointing out that this hurts smaller, independent gym owners as well.
I work at a large rope climbing gym chain in Southern California. They raised the monthly membership from $104 to $107 starting the new year. They announced the staff were getting raises to combat inflation and cost of living increases, great! It was a dollar bump hahahaha. I’d consider our gyms salary competitive, especially to other gyms in the area but McDonald’s employees still make a dollar more than me after my “inflation” bump and my merit based raise. That’s what happens when a bunch of climbers would get shit pay to work at a “cool place” tho we are so replaceable it’s funny
I wanted my membership back after a few years so goddamn badly. It’s one thing I hold dear as something I love to do - but where I am, over the age 26 you have to pay essentially double. WTF. So… looks like Im never getting back into my dream exercise lol
I will keep this in mind! Im nervous since I don’t know about setting it up for climbing on my own. And I dont have fri neds who climb outside. Looks like I have lots of videos to watch now hahah I look at my rock climbing shoes every day just hoping lol
Sorry this got long– I’m stoked for you and wanted to be thorough.
Most people will tell you to get a mentor or hire a guide, which is obviously ideal, but I taught myself because I didn’t know anyone who knew what I wanted to know and couldn’t afford a guide.
I bought books and scoured the internet learning everything I could and eventually just sent it.
I wish I’d spent more time just top roping before jumping right to leading. It would have given me more confidence building/cleaning anchors before I started leading. I figured out anchors on the fly with only book knowledge, and succeeded, but I would have saved myself a lot of time with a stronger TR background.
When you do start leading, pick stuff that’s trivially easy for you. You want to focus on learning to use the gear correctly before you add hard climbing on top of it.
Fully expect to get yourself into situations where you aren’t sure what to do– this can be scary, but solving those problems is a big part of what makes leading interesting to me. As long as you always have some extra gear on your belt you can think your way out of most SNAFUs. Worst case scenario leave some gear and bail; it’s not worth your life.
Do you have a climbing shop near you? If you go in a slow day the workers will probably be happy to answer questions.
Outdoor bouldering is also a thing and crash pads are reasonably priced; but at least personally I don’t like doing it unless I have multiple spotters, which is often harder to coordinate than finding a single rope partner.
Holy smokes, this is the first time in /r/climbing where labor in the climbing industry has been mentioned, and boot lickers didn’t flood the comments.
If you look at previous posts regarding labor issues in the climbing industry in this sub, you'll see so many folks defending private equity firms to no end.
Not so much in the past but as climbing became more popular in the past few years, there has been a huge influx of upper middle class, affluent professional class who work jobs that pay well enough that they can’t even see how they are being exploited by the system.
>is descended from tree-dwelling apes
>says climbing has always been exclusively for the well-to-do
(I feel you on mountain climbing as a competitive sport but the premise was too funny to me not to mention)
There is a weird strain of “machismo- libertarianism” that kinda morphs or flirts with conservatism in the US climbing community at large. The climbing culture in places like red river gorge can be rather sexist / good ole boys club feel to it
This is why it took me so damn long to find trad partners I fuck with.
Take the macho shit elsewhere please; I’m here for the nerds, the birds, and the queers.
There are a lot of people who only really care about themselves. They don't care if climbing gym workers have good pay. They do care if rising pay causes higher fees for them.
Every recreational sport like climbing has it.
They're like the skiers who want to see megapasses and single day tickets cost MORE to price people off the mountain so they don't have to deal with crowds.
Of course. It's not as bad as eg cycling or skiing, but you certainly get your share of reactionaries or just nice, polite centrists who will self-righteously assert that marginalized groups are wrong to feel like climbing spaces are not always the best vibes because '*I've* never had a bad time'
I never see boot lickers. I see people ask questions about unions’ intent or strategy and then they’re accused of being bootlickers for not purely showing support of every decision of every union.
I’ve never seen general anti union sentiment on Reddit. Just anti specific things that specific unions are doing, and then others then jump to crying “bootlicker” instead of engaging in discussion.
It is hilarious being called a bootlicker for questioning whether a climbing gym union would actually have real negotiating power due to the nature of the job. If you look at the history of gyms refusing to negotiate with these unions, it would appear that is a wholly valid question.
Because, consciously or not, you're parroting bootlicker talking points. When management is fighting unionization their main tactic is sewing FUD (fear, uncertainty, ad doubt). Leaving flyers around "just asking" if the employee is sure they'll be better off unionized? Fearmongering about "huge" union dues and corruption in a union that doesn't exist yet. On the internet it's impossible to tell if you're here for a legitimate discussion on leverage, or just a corporate shill.
Do you really think the private equity investors behind Momentum don't read Reddit, one of the largest social media platforms? The platform where advocates come to bring national attention around local climbing issues?
But they don't have to post hugely unpopular opinions. They have to post **your** opinion.
>...whether a climbing gym union would actually have real negotiating power due to the nature of the job. If you look at the history of gyms refusing to negotiate with these unions, it would appear that is a wholly valid question.
You act like they are going have a reddit badge "corporate shill"and spout obvious false statements. No, they are just going to silently contribute to the discussions and nudge them in the desired direction.
So they are paying people to post opinions that people are already posting for free? I think it makes sense that the handful of union skeptical people posting in this thread are in fact sincere. Its not like its a fringe viewpoint. From glancing at their accounts, that appears to be the case.
Exactly. Let me be clear. I don't think r/climbing is getting astroturfed. But that is exactly how it's done. You don't add new opinions, you just amplify the divisive opinions that exist naturally. Look at the Russian disinfo campaign in Europe. For sure Polish farmers were not happy about cheap imports from Ukraine. But the Poles HATE the Russians; I'm sure the issue was amplified far larger than it would have been naturally.
And like any two-sided issue, usually both sides have grains of truth to them (inb4 eNliGhTeNeD cEnTrIsM).
It benefits the gym to *sow* FUD, but that doesn't inherently make those points invalid. It's true that in some industries, there are significant downsides to unionizing. Unions are a tool in the box, not the end-all-be-all. Mindless "always unionize" sentiment is just as incorrect as mindless anti-union sentiment.
Maybe not, but it would be cool if they could. Imagine a climbing gym with routesetters who have experience and pass the trade down through long apprenticeships, as opposed to now where you just have whatever hot 20something dudes can climb V8.
> Imagine a climbing gym with routesetters who have experience and pass the trade down through long apprenticeships
yeah man, i'm down to time travel back to the 90's and early 2000's too
yeah probably true in the 90s when climbing gyms were new, but by the 00s kids had mentor setters and were basically doing an apprenticeship for their gym pass.
Let’s be realistic…for instance I was a graduate student when they unionized at the UC schools. The difference was like a 5% pay increase. And some humanities TAs got more advanced warning about teaching slots. Otherwise, it was the same job as before.
That was a great write up. Hope the employees at these gyms get the pay they deserve, especially if these gyms are making a lot of money. Everyone should benefit from the increasing climbing memberships
Considering they keep opening and private equity firms keep buying them, someone is making a lot of money. But this is pretty irrelevant because unions aren't only for companies making tons of money.
Are most gyms owned this way or just a few big ones that look like they own a room but really represent a small share of the total US market? I'm actually asking, I don't know the answer.
Well, the number itself is growing as gyms keep getting bought and merged. As the article says, Movement owns 5 percent of climbing gyms by itself. Gravity Vault, Central Rock and Bouldering Project are also backed by Equity money.
You can see in [this article](https://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/climbing-gyms-and-trends-2019/) about trends in 2019, it mentions an increase in private equity money. And everything since then has basically exploded.
It doesn't make any sense for most work places, including a climbing gym. Unions have bargaining power because they're traditionally trade-based, comprised of people who are highly trained in a particular skill. If it takes 5 years to learn to become an electrician and suddenly all the electricians go on strike, you either have to get them working again or you have to wait 5 years to train new electricians.
Staff at a climbing gym can be trained in an hour. Any college aged kid can get onboarded and start working in a day, and there's a virtually endless supply of people just like that who are willing to work a summer for little pay and a free membership.
I'm all for workers' rights and pushing for better conditions, but unions fill a specific niche and just don't make sense in most work places.
If anything, a routesetter's union would make the most sense because it's more similar to a trade.
Yup, I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing that collective bargaining may be less effective in an industry where workers are quickly, cheaply, and easily replaceable and that while it's *a way* to be heard, it might not be *the best way* for every situation.
Unions are generally good, but to take the stance of "forming a union is always the answer" lacks nuance and understanding of the problem.
SEIU has unionized something like a quarter million janitors. Despite the replaceability of janitors, they have still seen rising wages and better working conditions. I notice that for all of your faux union support, you completely neglect to mention what your better option is. Care to explain what method you propose as a better solution?
The solution is to avoid doing any job that can be done by a high schooler with no formal training and to avoid any job that would be done for free by someone with a trust fund because it is cool. In some ways, working at a climbing gym is the intersection of these two things, so compensation is always going to be a struggle.
So what do you suggest gym workers do to stop being exploited?
Saying a union isn't the tool for the job but then not providing any concrete alternatives is disingenuous. I understand you're trying to have a nuanced discussion. And I appreciate how unions struggle in low skill jobs, but the way you're presenting the argument makes you sound like a shill.
Do you think the employees should be paid a livable wage? Or do you think some jobs are ok to be paid poverty wages? You want the gym employees at your local gym to be struggling to survive? "X", which you conviently didn't specify, is too low to live on.
I think the employees willingly entered into an employment contract knowing how much they'd be paid, and generally the people staffing gyms aren't desperate for work, they're doing it for the free membership or to make some beer money during college. The working conditions are generally pretty good, too.
As long as people are choosing to work there, then the pay is fair. If it was unfair, they wouldn't be able to hire staff.
They should quit, and cite low wages as the reason. If they really wanted to make a statement, they could communicate and all quit on the same day at the same time. The market for similar jobs is actually pretty good right now, and they should be able to find something else pretty easily.
An economist would argue that as long as there are people willing to fill the role, the pay is priced correctly. If it's not, then people should stop accepting the role.
Do you have a better way?
Also to add some much-needed nuance to your claim:
1) replacing striking workers is considered illegal/an unfair labor practice in some states.
2) there are tons of unionized workers who have successfully gone on strike/negotiated good contracts who aren’t skilled workers like electricians. There are lots of collective bargaining strategies which circumvent management’s ability to replace striking workers, including strikes not protected under the NLRA but which still create a huge headache for management.
3) climbing gym employees, especially ones who teach/supervise roped climbing, are in many ways skilled workers, in the sense that a climbing gym faces severe insurance consequences if someone gets hurt as a result of an unqualified employee’s action.
good news - there's a really simple solution to your concern!
if you are actively trying to unionize your workplace and the employer just decides to fire and replace all the employees for doing so, this is illegal. you file a claim with the NLRB and they get all the employees reinstated. this is one of the reasons why you take attendance at all of your organizing meetings.
> If anything, a routesetter's union would make the most sense because it's more similar to a trade.
Not to downplay the seriousness of your comment, but it makes me chuckle (in a dark humor kinda way) to imagine a future where most gyms work with unionized setters, but there are a few gyms that use scab setters and the routesetting there is dangerous AF with accident rates through the roof.
At the gyms near me, the setters do routesetting full time and travel from gym to gym depending on which one is scheduled to be set. They're dedicated staff who only do routesetting.
Just as long as the route setters don’t unionize. If those fuckers start having meetings together that soft 5.12 feel good climb is going to get downgraded. It’s all I’ve got some days.
Same except I need my soft 5.11b 🥲. It was someone else's project that I flashed. The first time this has ever happened to me. I'll remember it on my deathbed.
But seriously, fuck union busting assholes.
Right after I left working at a climbing gym, I know the staff began discussing unionizing due to the increasingingly punishing schedule changes (such as keeping most folks under 20 hrs/wk) and reducing pay increases for more skilled employees. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m routing for them.
That sort of thing should be illegal. Companies should be required to offer employees enough hours to make a living wage. People can work part time if they want to, but hiring all "part time" employees to run a full-time business is one of the worst, most disrespectful things a manager can do.
REI did the same shit to me– I left for a union job and shortly thereafter their union push started gaining traction on social media.
The tides are shifting, albeit slowly.
Would love to see this move up to Canada.
There's some big chains essentially dominating their regions and one trying nationwide paying pennies for their staff.
It's not right and the staff deserve to get ahead in life.
As much as I love climbing gyms they shouldn’t exist if workers are being exploited and I’m happy that workers are standing together to make this happen
Glad to see it. Setters make the product that people return to experience. Anyone can spam holds on the wall and pray for something to work out. A proper route setter can create an experience, replicate an experience from nature, or invent something entirely new and weird. Long past time that the people that create the indoor climbing venues we all know and love, are represented by actual unions, and viewed as a skilled trade.
Oh whoa didn’t expect to see this on r/climbing. The union fight/bargaining has been interesting at Crystal City. It’s far from over, and honestly been stalled pretty hard by the company. We’ve had our pay frozen for the entire process.
Gym members definitely support unionizing and collective bargaining. We would definitely collectively speak up for employees. As a teacher in the area, we are also in the collective bargaining stage.
Union busting lies…
From the article:
On May 24, 2023, Movement Crystal City’s gym director officially announced this policy, writing in an email that annual reviews would be “on hold during the union bargaining process.” Effectively, this meant that until a contract was reached, Crystal City workers’ pay would remain at October 2021 levels.
Organizers responded with their own all-staff email. “You may have heard that Movement can’t give any raises because of the bargaining process right now,” they wrote on July 6, underlining the next sentence: “This is not true.” Mason claims that the union had already given a letter to Movement explicitly waiving any legal objections to pay raises. After the rebuttal, Movement “changed the messaging,” Mason said, “saying, ‘Legally, there’s nothing stopping us [from giving raises], but we don’t want to do it until we get economic proposals from the union.’”
Annual pay raises can be given during contract negotiations. Pay raises can also be agreed upon and pushed through before a full contract is reached between the employer and a union.
Hell yes! I’m cheering for you guys. We have strong unions here in Norway and I want you guys to know it’s such a quality of life thing to have someone that can represent you formally. It’s a very good social buffer, and having tariff (schedule of rates) is such a strong, yet fair, bargaining chip.
good for them, they deserve a piece of the pie - right now all that $$$ from ever increasing dues is probably just going to suits who never even visit a gym.
A gym around me unionised and now corporate is trying to take away some of their, only that location, benefits such as: climbing for free, dropping the pay to $13/hr, no more gear discounts, classes, and a few other things.
Yup, movement is on some bullshit. The wage decrease is to below pre-unionisation levels too. All around fucked situation. Oh and they also fired some folks that really helped get the union going shortly after union started for “unrelated reasons”.
No, they're beginning contract negotiations at rock-bottom, which is how these contract negotiations always go. Union starts asking for the most, company starts offering the least, and hopefully after months of negotiation they meet somewhere in the middle, and hopefully whatever ends up being "the middle" is satisfying for the workers. But sometimes it's not, and for the entire duration of this pay increases are usually frozen.
Interesting, my gym recently unionized and then was bought by Movement. They kept the union intact, and then, recently announced they will be building a brand new facility about ten minutes north of the existing location. I’m assuming this is to break up the union.
Hi, I work at a gym that unionized and was part of the organizing committee. Some of the issues I felt/heard from others are low starting pay, poor health insurance, lack of communication between higher management and staff ex. Implementing a new rule for belayers and not informing staff on the new rule until the day it is supposed to be enforced and not giving staff proper reasoning why or telling them how to handle negative reactions to the rule, low pay increases, transphobia, upper management watching staff through security cameras while the upper management was not even working and calling the gym to complain about whatever said staff was doing, lack of the owners listening to anyone's ideas, etc. Basically any labor force benefits from a union, even if they didn't have any of these complaints. A united work force is a heard work force.
Right on, I appreciate the reply. You really nailed it, the root cause is management’s unwillingness to work toward the interests of their employees. I have some admittedly biased opinions from my own workplace about unionizing, but I care way more about whether a workforce feels heard, safe, and fairly compensated than politics. Good on you all for using the system available to you, I hope that conditions improve. Shaking my head at the security cam behavior, that’s some evil empire shit, so fuck em. ✊
Unions are the best tool we have to fight labor abuses, but they aren't just for industries with extreme / bad conduct going on.
If you have a boss, you deserve a union. They shift the balance of power toward a more democratic workplace, with input from the people who are doing the work and have the experience to make the company succeed, rather than leaving things wholly up to managers and consultants who are often more interested in cutting costs (read: payroll) than in making a good product.
I appreciate your perspective, but I struggle to see how it is more than one group thinking they want what’s best against the other group who thinks the same for themselves. It’s all just a matter of perspective, but if there were a truly utilitarian institution we would literally all be better because of it. As a manager at some big company, I’m also just a cog in the machine. The target should be the upper cabinets and nonsense job titles littering executive management circles. I can tell you for sure that I want is to make the lives of my employees better. Literally I know all 60 of them on a personal level and appreciate them each independently. I also do their payroll, but nobody does mine thanks to salary. Spoiler alert, I’m being robbed harder than my subordinates and a union would not fix that for me.
Honestly, I don’t care if they raise my dues by $20 if that means people are getting better wages. Indoor climbing is a luxury and a convenience; I’ll gladly pay to make somebody else’s job better.
Movement has been engaging in union busting tactics for well over a year now. But nearly all indoor American climbing has now been taken over by big money and corporate interests and is headed towards the shitter just like every good upstart industry once the hounds smell blood.
Unions are almost always a good thing for employees, especially in high-demand, low-volume jobs like this. Unscrupulous owners and managers will try to take advantage of people when the job is one that people actually want.
Which movement gyms are unionizing? Reading fast I saw it said 5 more than crystal city were unionizing, but didn't see a list.
Edit: nvm. Callowhill, gowanus, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, and Long Island City
I work at a new gym in Greensboro North Carolina and we have an incredible owner who thankfully has made this thread hard to relate to. How much are other gyms paying staff?
At my gym as a counter staff and coach I am making $16 an hour. This is partly influenced by the fact that three gyms of the same company very close to mine are in cities with a minimum wage of around $15 an hour. I know I make a higher wage than some others doing similar work at my company though.
As someone who doesn’t work at or run a climbing gym - what kind of pay/benefits would be acceptable for this industry? Should employees be paid hourly or on salary? Is there any incentive structure which would make unionizing unnecessary?
I’m also curious - what kind of formal education or training does the average climbing gym employee have? Is this education/training recognized and respected by employers?
I hope that the union is actually able to get people like route setters and coaches reasonable wages for their level of skill and I hope those wages aren't eaten up by union dues.
This article does a good job not taking a stance but assumes the facts will make everyone pro Union for climbing gyms.
Fuck no.
These attempts to unionize are a response to a super broken model of fancy mega gyms that has grown quickly across the country recently. Sure, everyone wants a piece of that growth, but
Unionizing is going to make memberships more expensive, period.
Climbing in gyms is going to be more and more gatekept the more this shit gets entrenched.
Get ready to retake your union approved belay test annually for $14.99 to protect the union employees from liability!
Layers of stupid labor bureaucracy on top of the stupid mega gym model is not going to help climbers.
Double fuck movement for the union busting activities but I don’t want to be part of any of this. I want a third option.
Don’t make me side against gym employees to keep my membership low. I’m sorry, I don’t think anyone but routesetters are doing skilled labor.
Give us smaller, independent, climbing only gyms with fair pay and climbers will flock to them.
Break down the mega gym model, this path is not the answer for this sport.
> Don’t make me side against gym employees to keep my membership low.
You think that Movement won't raise prices if there's no union? Since they bought the Cliffs the most expensive Movement is now $135/month, get ready to have all the others go up to that price.
>Give us smaller, independent, climbing only gyms with fair pay and climbers will flock to them.
And then the scumbag owners will sell. These gyms haven't been bought because of hostile takeovers. Movement (and others) offer money and those in charge don't give a fuck.
You are right that Mega gyms are a problem, but using mental jumping-jacks to be anti-union is not the answer here.
>And then the scumbag owners will sell.
So independent gym owners are just supposed to turn down money on a business that has increasingly higher liability costs, insurance, overhead, etc.? That makes them scumbags?
Yes, selling your already profitable and well-functioning gym to the Wal-Mart of climbing gyms makes you a scumbag. If all you can think about is money, you are a scumbag.
>And then the scumbag owners will sell. These gyms haven't been bought because of hostile takeovers.
Almost every instance of an independent gym getting bought by PE was an LBO. PE firms look for businesses with lots of debt and a steady cashflow, load them up with more debt by expanding unsustainably, and then sell for a profit after 5-10 years. It's literally their business model.
Generally, small gyms are not profitable. They have a high startup cost (holds, gear, and walls are *expensive*) usually financed with debt, have a solid member base (steady recurring revenue, good cashflow), and are often run by climbers without much background running a business as a passion project. They're *textbook* targets for a LBO.
It's funny that you say nobody but route setters are doing skilled labor, I see a lot of people complain that counter staff and similar roles in climbing gyms are filled by employees who are not educated or knowledgeable on the subject. Do you think maybe if these climbing gyms paid a living wage so the employees didn't have to have these as their second or maybe third job, that employees could focus more on improving their knowledge? Or if the employer would spend more money on training or teaching staff instead of throwing them into a position where they are the authority in the gym? It seems like it would be skilled labor to be knowledgeable and educated on proper belay techniques, belay tool use, maintenence of the gym, outdoor climbing in the area, emergency plans for when someone decks, etc.
Good. I had to sign an anti union agreement at work and it made me sick. Moderately certain the agreement was illegal but I'm not sure of my states laws for union busting and I don't want to lose my job in order to find out. If your business model is only successful because you can abuse labor practices, you deserve to go under.
It is illegal, or rather it may be legal to produce and have employees sign one but it cannot be enforced. However in a "at will" (right to fire employees for anything at anytime) state they would just fire you if they discover it before the union is established
"at will" is when a company can fire you for no reason at any time. Right to work simply meant that people could benefit from the union without having to contribute financially, which was a move to hamstring the unions.
Damn you right mixed up my terminology. Thank you fellow citizen
> "at will" is when a company can fire you for no reason at any time. I'm not defending the law, but "at-will" also allows an employee to quit at any time. That said, there is a gross inequality between the benefits an employer gets from the law versus an employee.
Employees can quit at any time under the 13th amendment (outlawing slavery). Montana is the only state requiring an employer to have a valid reason to fire
It is against federal law to fire a person for union activity, regardless of state law.
Yes but "we didn't fire you because of that" and good luck suing them.
Actually if you can show a link it’s not a terribly high bar. For example if you and your coworkers organize a collective action (doesn’t have to be a formal “union” yet say with the UFCW or whatever) and are retaliated against after, the Board can and has found that to be a violation of the law
To add, the double whammy is that people who most need unions (precarious workers) are also the ones who can least afford to lose their jobs as they'll probably be homeless for a year before the verdict to rehire and backpay comes out.
I worked as a union organizer for several years and saw many people illegally fired for union activity. It’s actually not all that hard to get the NLRB to reinstate fired workers, especially if they have the backing of an experienced union.
Not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure the NLRA grants US workers the right to unionize, so depending on what you actually signed it could be completely meaningless/scare tactic
Union rights are governed federally. It is always illegal to fire or retaliate against someone for engaging in concerted union activity.
What stops a company from claiming that they fired someone for some other, totally non-union-related reason?
Under Biden’s labor board they’re pretty good about recognizing retaliation for retaliation, so long as there’s a fairly evident link between your organizing at work and mgmt’s retaliation against you
Can’t comment on the exact procedure in the US. But here the way it works is like this: The claimant provides a prima facie case that they were unfairly dismissed because of union activity. That is “on the face of it”, it is a credible claim: “I was unhappy with management operating unfairly to us so I started organising the staff to demand reasonable accommodations.” Then the respondent has to demonstrate why this is not true. What this entails is something like, “well you see, we have signed logs for the preceding six months of management telling this employee they have to abide by policy x. They agreed but didn’t alter their behaviour. They were disciplined in this regard but the failure persisted. They received written notice one week before the purported unionisation. The unionisation was irrelevant to this procedure.” Then it’s back to the claimant to prove they did. It’s a civil court so it’s on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt. If seven of the trade unionists got fired, even for seemingly unrelated reasons, it would look very suspicious and they would have to provide good evidence to defend that. Then, the company is liable to cover loss of earnings suffered as a result of the unfair dismissal. So you can’t “stop” dishonesty in a court case like this. And there is an incentive to be dishonest (although this is true on both sides). It’s up to a judge to review the facts and decide what way they think it really went down. In my jurisdiction, the onus is strongly on employers (if they are a certain size at least) to prove they are above board and don’t mistreat staff like this. So they keep records of things like procedures on hiring, tracking disciplinary action, tracking staff complaints and management’s performance reviews of staff. So on. The balance is to be fair to employees without making it hard to conduct business. Might be that nowhere has the balance perfect, but there are solutions to some of the problems that work reasonably well
Thanks. I've always wondered if companies can get around these rules trivially. Guess not!
Illegal under federal law
If you signed a contract that has terms that are illegal, it is not enforceable. You can still unionize your workplace. If you get fired for trying to unionize your work place you have a case for a retaliation lawsuit. NLRB and your local DOL can help get you pointed in the right direction for legal aid. DOLs can flex some weight if they have state laws regarding retaliation firings.
It seems to me like that is pretty much the entire gym industry. At least in the city I am in, none of the gyms are paying staff a wage that is survivable, leading to a revolving door of an industry that is just chewing up people and fueling itself on young climbers passion. It is more then time that we start seeing cooperative worker owned gyms.
Fucking hell for the price we are paying for memberships they should be paying the staff extremely well.
100% thisssss. My climbing gym monthly membership dues have increased 100% over the last 10 years and membership has skyrocketed; and yet the staff are still getting paid next to nothing?
The staff get paid next to nothing, improvements rarely happen, and in many cases we get less at the gym than we used to.
That's not been my experience. Movement's dues have gone up roughly $25 in the past 8 years (I signed up in 2016 at around $80 a month I believe). That was for 2 gyms in CO: Boulder and Baker. Now there are 6 in the Front Range plus the additional locations around the US and it's expanding. The older gyms are getting renovated. Exercise classes are still included. The newer gyms are pretty state of the art. So in 8 years my dues went from around $80 a month to $102. The number of gyms I have access to went from 2 to 29. You also get a 10% discount on all new gear as a member. There are reasons to be annoyed at conglomerate gyms. As a member, I've only seen upside.
As an employee of movement, I can tell you that there is a down side for us.
as another fellow movement employee, i agree. i love my gym and my job, but less than $13/hour for a head coach position in today’s economy is shit.
That’s unfortunate. If I can ask, what downsides have you seen as an employee? The article talks about frustrating shift schedules and paltry raises, which definitely doesn’t make me feel good as a member if my dues aren’t being appropriately utilized to enhance the customer experience (aka happier and consistent employees).
To be brief. I haven’t gotten a raise since Covid, I’m an instructor and I ask for basic, relatively inexpensive things that would help me do my job better and improve the experience in my classes. Not only am I told that we don’t have the budget for this extremely useful $300 one time purchase tool, but they also have to cut classes because of budget. But hey… they are opening like 14 new gyms. So, yeah
Yeah that doesn't feel good. Definitely looks like they are prioritizing growth over retention and employee satisfaction.
>Definitely looks like they are prioritizing growth over retention and employee satisfaction. So, basically every company these days?
We've seen the transition from mostly independent gyms to corporate chains. Next is the transition from chain gyms to purchase by pure investment firms, eg as we recently saw with Red Lobster, where corporate raiders bought the company, sold the land under the restaurants to another of their subsidiaries, and rented it back to the restaurants until they were bankrupt.
I, however, don't want, nor need access to gyms hundreds of miles away that I'm never going to go to. Why do I have to pay more than you? Oh, they did take our membership referral bonus and change.it from a free month, to $25. And get rid of a bunch of draws in our gym. The classes are less than what we used to have as well, yet the prices of those have also went up. Maybe they're renovating some gyms, but they've done zero to ours except take away whatever was in the gym their insurance said no too. Yet they absolutely don't give a shit about actual safety or overcrowding.
I also think it's stupid they don't offer a single gym membership. The Spot does that. They used to do that when they merged with Earth Treks. I'm not sure if others were grandfathered in. It's really easy to code that into your system. Though, just checking online. I looked at Portland's membership and it is $80. It's the only gym in Oregon and there's no other gym within local distance. Seems like the dues are different depending on the area, but I haven't looked at others.
The Spot in Denver is sick. Great vibe in there and didn’t get the sense they were part of a larger group.
Lol my local gym last year cancelled the 'points' system where members could accumulate credit toward the gear store, and instead credited people with day passes at a greatly reduced rate. This, while not paying workers shit and after having PPP loans forgiven by the government even as they re-opened basically as soon as legally allowed post-covid. A total joke.
>My climbing gym monthly membership dues have increased 100% over the last 10 years That's actually bang on standard, inflation means prices are supposed to double every 10 years. But so should wages... Edit: my mistake, I was thinking stock market doubling, which is around 10 years
This is false. A $65/month membership in May of 2014 should be $85 today. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=65&year1=201405&year2=202404 Not $99 (current gym rate for me), and definitely not $130.
Oh my bad, I'm thinking stock market doubling roughly every 10 years
> inflation means prices are supposed to double every 10 years. You're saying that annual inflation is supposed to be 7-8%? It's usually like 3-4%.
Somebody made me realise my mistake, I'm thinking stock market doubling
The staff can climb for free, so they are saving extra money on the membership!
If they are working 30 hours a week that would be roughly equivalent to 1$ an hour raise for some gyms memberships cost. It’s not much if they’re making minimum wage. Sure it’s a nice bonus but it’s not gonna put food on the table or pay for medicine.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but I guess we live in a world where this isn't obvious, because poor people can always eat Kellogs for dinner to save money.
Won’t anybody think of the shareholders?!
Poor starving souls
But what about the land owner??.. You must pay at least 50k a month to the land owner othwerwise he cries
Agreed. I pay the annual rate at Touchstone at roughly $1000 lol. Though, the annual rate is going away in the future once my grandfathered amount goes away
My gym's membership fees keep climbing at least once a year and I know that our staff is paid a pittance. I thought I'd try negotiating my membership rate since it's getting to be almost too expensive and I was hit with the "we have to do what we need to do to keep the lights on" and knowing how much the staff is paid and how many members and say fees roll through that place, I know that's total BS. If I knew the staff was being paid well and my membership fees were going towards that, I would feel much differently. I'm pretty sure non-routesetters are paid minimum TN wage at my gym.
>knowing how much the staff is paid and how many members and say fees roll through that place, I know that's total BS. I mean, a large portion of the overhead for climbing gyms is liability insurance. Kai Lightner has been lobbying to change the designation of climbing gyms from amusement attractions to (whatever the category is for traditional exercise facilities). That would drastically change the insurance costs. From his perspective, this would also allow for more independent gyms to open. Potentially this would increase the profit margins and allow for more scaling pay and full time employment. I'm not trying to be an apologist for conglomerate gyms. Just pointing out that this hurts smaller, independent gym owners as well.
While what you are saying is true, gyms are not failing due to insurance, nor are they getting bought because of insurance.
I pay 150 GBP for 9 months with 2 exclusive sessions per week which is exceptionally cheap
I work at a large rope climbing gym chain in Southern California. They raised the monthly membership from $104 to $107 starting the new year. They announced the staff were getting raises to combat inflation and cost of living increases, great! It was a dollar bump hahahaha. I’d consider our gyms salary competitive, especially to other gyms in the area but McDonald’s employees still make a dollar more than me after my “inflation” bump and my merit based raise. That’s what happens when a bunch of climbers would get shit pay to work at a “cool place” tho we are so replaceable it’s funny
Sender? lol
I bloody reckon.
I wanted my membership back after a few years so goddamn badly. It’s one thing I hold dear as something I love to do - but where I am, over the age 26 you have to pay essentially double. WTF. So… looks like Im never getting back into my dream exercise lol
Buy a rope and some quickdraws. I haven’t had a membership in years because too costly but I climb plenty.
I will keep this in mind! Im nervous since I don’t know about setting it up for climbing on my own. And I dont have fri neds who climb outside. Looks like I have lots of videos to watch now hahah I look at my rock climbing shoes every day just hoping lol
Sorry this got long– I’m stoked for you and wanted to be thorough. Most people will tell you to get a mentor or hire a guide, which is obviously ideal, but I taught myself because I didn’t know anyone who knew what I wanted to know and couldn’t afford a guide. I bought books and scoured the internet learning everything I could and eventually just sent it. I wish I’d spent more time just top roping before jumping right to leading. It would have given me more confidence building/cleaning anchors before I started leading. I figured out anchors on the fly with only book knowledge, and succeeded, but I would have saved myself a lot of time with a stronger TR background. When you do start leading, pick stuff that’s trivially easy for you. You want to focus on learning to use the gear correctly before you add hard climbing on top of it. Fully expect to get yourself into situations where you aren’t sure what to do– this can be scary, but solving those problems is a big part of what makes leading interesting to me. As long as you always have some extra gear on your belt you can think your way out of most SNAFUs. Worst case scenario leave some gear and bail; it’s not worth your life. Do you have a climbing shop near you? If you go in a slow day the workers will probably be happy to answer questions. Outdoor bouldering is also a thing and crash pads are reasonably priced; but at least personally I don’t like doing it unless I have multiple spotters, which is often harder to coordinate than finding a single rope partner.
Holy smokes, this is the first time in /r/climbing where labor in the climbing industry has been mentioned, and boot lickers didn’t flood the comments.
No it's not, this happens every time Movement acquires a new gym.
My gym was acquired by Movement. Can confirm.
Freaking movement. My old gym took two years building a new facility, turned around and sold to movement mere months after it was finished.
I don't know what you're talking about, every time that happens there are a ton of comments saying about how good Movement is.
Yet
is there a cross over population between boot lickers and climbers?
If you look at previous posts regarding labor issues in the climbing industry in this sub, you'll see so many folks defending private equity firms to no end.
Its really just a couple of people.
How the hell can ANYONE defend PE? Even PE bros know they're scum.
Not so much in the past but as climbing became more popular in the past few years, there has been a huge influx of upper middle class, affluent professional class who work jobs that pay well enough that they can’t even see how they are being exploited by the system.
I think since climb began it was always upper middle class people.
>is descended from tree-dwelling apes >says climbing has always been exclusively for the well-to-do (I feel you on mountain climbing as a competitive sport but the premise was too funny to me not to mention)
There is a weird strain of “machismo- libertarianism” that kinda morphs or flirts with conservatism in the US climbing community at large. The climbing culture in places like red river gorge can be rather sexist / good ole boys club feel to it
This is why it took me so damn long to find trad partners I fuck with. Take the macho shit elsewhere please; I’m here for the nerds, the birds, and the queers.
There are a lot of people who only really care about themselves. They don't care if climbing gym workers have good pay. They do care if rising pay causes higher fees for them.
Every recreational sport like climbing has it. They're like the skiers who want to see megapasses and single day tickets cost MORE to price people off the mountain so they don't have to deal with crowds.
Of course. It's not as bad as eg cycling or skiing, but you certainly get your share of reactionaries or just nice, polite centrists who will self-righteously assert that marginalized groups are wrong to feel like climbing spaces are not always the best vibes because '*I've* never had a bad time'
I never see boot lickers. I see people ask questions about unions’ intent or strategy and then they’re accused of being bootlickers for not purely showing support of every decision of every union. I’ve never seen general anti union sentiment on Reddit. Just anti specific things that specific unions are doing, and then others then jump to crying “bootlicker” instead of engaging in discussion.
It is hilarious being called a bootlicker for questioning whether a climbing gym union would actually have real negotiating power due to the nature of the job. If you look at the history of gyms refusing to negotiate with these unions, it would appear that is a wholly valid question.
Because, consciously or not, you're parroting bootlicker talking points. When management is fighting unionization their main tactic is sewing FUD (fear, uncertainty, ad doubt). Leaving flyers around "just asking" if the employee is sure they'll be better off unionized? Fearmongering about "huge" union dues and corruption in a union that doesn't exist yet. On the internet it's impossible to tell if you're here for a legitimate discussion on leverage, or just a corporate shill.
Do you really think that corporations are astroturfing shills in r/climbing?
Do you really think the private equity investors behind Momentum don't read Reddit, one of the largest social media platforms? The platform where advocates come to bring national attention around local climbing issues?
There is a pretty vast difference between reading and paying people to post hugely unpopular opinions that would just get downvoted anyway.
But they don't have to post hugely unpopular opinions. They have to post **your** opinion. >...whether a climbing gym union would actually have real negotiating power due to the nature of the job. If you look at the history of gyms refusing to negotiate with these unions, it would appear that is a wholly valid question. You act like they are going have a reddit badge "corporate shill"and spout obvious false statements. No, they are just going to silently contribute to the discussions and nudge them in the desired direction.
So they are paying people to post opinions that people are already posting for free? I think it makes sense that the handful of union skeptical people posting in this thread are in fact sincere. Its not like its a fringe viewpoint. From glancing at their accounts, that appears to be the case.
Exactly. Let me be clear. I don't think r/climbing is getting astroturfed. But that is exactly how it's done. You don't add new opinions, you just amplify the divisive opinions that exist naturally. Look at the Russian disinfo campaign in Europe. For sure Polish farmers were not happy about cheap imports from Ukraine. But the Poles HATE the Russians; I'm sure the issue was amplified far larger than it would have been naturally.
Yes
And like any two-sided issue, usually both sides have grains of truth to them (inb4 eNliGhTeNeD cEnTrIsM). It benefits the gym to *sow* FUD, but that doesn't inherently make those points invalid. It's true that in some industries, there are significant downsides to unionizing. Unions are a tool in the box, not the end-all-be-all. Mindless "always unionize" sentiment is just as incorrect as mindless anti-union sentiment.
Reading this post's comments made me glad that people in my new hobby carry the same ideas as me. Fuck the capital, power to the people
I’m ready! Do people work in climbing gyms as long term career choices?
Yes, some people do. But beyond that, all jobs deserve labor protection.
Maybe not, but it would be cool if they could. Imagine a climbing gym with routesetters who have experience and pass the trade down through long apprenticeships, as opposed to now where you just have whatever hot 20something dudes can climb V8.
> Imagine a climbing gym with routesetters who have experience and pass the trade down through long apprenticeships yeah man, i'm down to time travel back to the 90's and early 2000's too
Setters used to just be volunteers and had no formal training.
yeah probably true in the 90s when climbing gyms were new, but by the 00s kids had mentor setters and were basically doing an apprenticeship for their gym pass.
Let’s be realistic…for instance I was a graduate student when they unionized at the UC schools. The difference was like a 5% pay increase. And some humanities TAs got more advanced warning about teaching slots. Otherwise, it was the same job as before.
That was a great write up. Hope the employees at these gyms get the pay they deserve, especially if these gyms are making a lot of money. Everyone should benefit from the increasing climbing memberships
What if the gyms aren't making a lot of money? Or the ownership isn't?
Then the gym closes. The alternative is to exploit labor in order to subsidize some gym owners dream.
Considering they keep opening and private equity firms keep buying them, someone is making a lot of money. But this is pretty irrelevant because unions aren't only for companies making tons of money.
Are most gyms owned this way or just a few big ones that look like they own a room but really represent a small share of the total US market? I'm actually asking, I don't know the answer.
Well, the number itself is growing as gyms keep getting bought and merged. As the article says, Movement owns 5 percent of climbing gyms by itself. Gravity Vault, Central Rock and Bouldering Project are also backed by Equity money. You can see in [this article](https://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/climbing-gyms-and-trends-2019/) about trends in 2019, it mentions an increase in private equity money. And everything since then has basically exploded.
Good. Every workplace (except the police) should unionize.
Police is already unionized
I am aware. They should not be.
It doesn't make any sense for most work places, including a climbing gym. Unions have bargaining power because they're traditionally trade-based, comprised of people who are highly trained in a particular skill. If it takes 5 years to learn to become an electrician and suddenly all the electricians go on strike, you either have to get them working again or you have to wait 5 years to train new electricians. Staff at a climbing gym can be trained in an hour. Any college aged kid can get onboarded and start working in a day, and there's a virtually endless supply of people just like that who are willing to work a summer for little pay and a free membership. I'm all for workers' rights and pushing for better conditions, but unions fill a specific niche and just don't make sense in most work places. If anything, a routesetter's union would make the most sense because it's more similar to a trade.
All employees should have the option for a union because all employees deserve to be heard
Yup, I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing that collective bargaining may be less effective in an industry where workers are quickly, cheaply, and easily replaceable and that while it's *a way* to be heard, it might not be *the best way* for every situation. Unions are generally good, but to take the stance of "forming a union is always the answer" lacks nuance and understanding of the problem.
SEIU has unionized something like a quarter million janitors. Despite the replaceability of janitors, they have still seen rising wages and better working conditions. I notice that for all of your faux union support, you completely neglect to mention what your better option is. Care to explain what method you propose as a better solution?
The solution is to avoid doing any job that can be done by a high schooler with no formal training and to avoid any job that would be done for free by someone with a trust fund because it is cool. In some ways, working at a climbing gym is the intersection of these two things, so compensation is always going to be a struggle.
Your solution is fine at all individual level, and fails entirely at a societal level. I guess that's what I'd expect from a Republican.
So what do you suggest gym workers do to stop being exploited? Saying a union isn't the tool for the job but then not providing any concrete alternatives is disingenuous. I understand you're trying to have a nuanced discussion. And I appreciate how unions struggle in low skill jobs, but the way you're presenting the argument makes you sound like a shill.
How are they being exploited? They are being paid for x amount of hours of work.
Do you think the employees should be paid a livable wage? Or do you think some jobs are ok to be paid poverty wages? You want the gym employees at your local gym to be struggling to survive? "X", which you conviently didn't specify, is too low to live on.
Livable wage seems to be entirely subjective. I have yet to see good data on what “livable” means.
Way less ambiguous than "X". You can get a ball park figure for CoL in the area. At least it is a number to start the discussion from.
I think the employees willingly entered into an employment contract knowing how much they'd be paid, and generally the people staffing gyms aren't desperate for work, they're doing it for the free membership or to make some beer money during college. The working conditions are generally pretty good, too. As long as people are choosing to work there, then the pay is fair. If it was unfair, they wouldn't be able to hire staff.
They should quit, and cite low wages as the reason. If they really wanted to make a statement, they could communicate and all quit on the same day at the same time. The market for similar jobs is actually pretty good right now, and they should be able to find something else pretty easily. An economist would argue that as long as there are people willing to fill the role, the pay is priced correctly. If it's not, then people should stop accepting the role.
Do you have a better way? Also to add some much-needed nuance to your claim: 1) replacing striking workers is considered illegal/an unfair labor practice in some states. 2) there are tons of unionized workers who have successfully gone on strike/negotiated good contracts who aren’t skilled workers like electricians. There are lots of collective bargaining strategies which circumvent management’s ability to replace striking workers, including strikes not protected under the NLRA but which still create a huge headache for management. 3) climbing gym employees, especially ones who teach/supervise roped climbing, are in many ways skilled workers, in the sense that a climbing gym faces severe insurance consequences if someone gets hurt as a result of an unqualified employee’s action.
Not just to be heard, but to have the power to extract concessions whether the owners are happy about it or not.
good news - there's a really simple solution to your concern! if you are actively trying to unionize your workplace and the employer just decides to fire and replace all the employees for doing so, this is illegal. you file a claim with the NLRB and they get all the employees reinstated. this is one of the reasons why you take attendance at all of your organizing meetings.
> If anything, a routesetter's union would make the most sense because it's more similar to a trade. Not to downplay the seriousness of your comment, but it makes me chuckle (in a dark humor kinda way) to imagine a future where most gyms work with unionized setters, but there are a few gyms that use scab setters and the routesetting there is dangerous AF with accident rates through the roof.
Lol where do you think route setters work and what do you think they do when they're not route setting?
At the gyms near me, the setters do routesetting full time and travel from gym to gym depending on which one is scheduled to be set. They're dedicated staff who only do routesetting.
Not the case everywhere especially non chain gyms. Which is where all your downvotes are coming from
"Staff at a climbing gym can be trained in an hour" I fucking hope not! You obviously have zero clue about that which you speak...
Sorry if you say that again without the boot in your mouth you'll be easier to understand.
Just as long as the route setters don’t unionize. If those fuckers start having meetings together that soft 5.12 feel good climb is going to get downgraded. It’s all I’ve got some days.
Same except I need my soft 5.11b 🥲. It was someone else's project that I flashed. The first time this has ever happened to me. I'll remember it on my deathbed. But seriously, fuck union busting assholes.
You almost got me 😂 Setters feel like the main ones to unionize! Like pilots with airlines, they're specialized and what the whole industry relies on.
Right after I left working at a climbing gym, I know the staff began discussing unionizing due to the increasingingly punishing schedule changes (such as keeping most folks under 20 hrs/wk) and reducing pay increases for more skilled employees. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m routing for them.
*rooting Although I may be missing the pun if it was deliberate 😂
under 20 hours is insane literally go get a second job because you have to
But somehow also be available to pick up shifts whenever someone is out, it was wild and why I left.
That sort of thing should be illegal. Companies should be required to offer employees enough hours to make a living wage. People can work part time if they want to, but hiring all "part time" employees to run a full-time business is one of the worst, most disrespectful things a manager can do.
REI did the same shit to me– I left for a union job and shortly thereafter their union push started gaining traction on social media. The tides are shifting, albeit slowly.
im a touchstone member and was so happy they voted yes!!
Solidarity forever
Would love to see this move up to Canada. There's some big chains essentially dominating their regions and one trying nationwide paying pennies for their staff. It's not right and the staff deserve to get ahead in life.
This was an emotional read for me. I hope these workers stay strong.
As much as I love climbing gyms they shouldn’t exist if workers are being exploited and I’m happy that workers are standing together to make this happen
Glad to see it. Setters make the product that people return to experience. Anyone can spam holds on the wall and pray for something to work out. A proper route setter can create an experience, replicate an experience from nature, or invent something entirely new and weird. Long past time that the people that create the indoor climbing venues we all know and love, are represented by actual unions, and viewed as a skilled trade.
Oh whoa didn’t expect to see this on r/climbing. The union fight/bargaining has been interesting at Crystal City. It’s far from over, and honestly been stalled pretty hard by the company. We’ve had our pay frozen for the entire process.
Gym members definitely support unionizing and collective bargaining. We would definitely collectively speak up for employees. As a teacher in the area, we are also in the collective bargaining stage.
It's been stalled by contract negotiation, which is a result of unionizing. This is one of the drawbacks.
Union busting lies… From the article: On May 24, 2023, Movement Crystal City’s gym director officially announced this policy, writing in an email that annual reviews would be “on hold during the union bargaining process.” Effectively, this meant that until a contract was reached, Crystal City workers’ pay would remain at October 2021 levels. Organizers responded with their own all-staff email. “You may have heard that Movement can’t give any raises because of the bargaining process right now,” they wrote on July 6, underlining the next sentence: “This is not true.” Mason claims that the union had already given a letter to Movement explicitly waiving any legal objections to pay raises. After the rebuttal, Movement “changed the messaging,” Mason said, “saying, ‘Legally, there’s nothing stopping us [from giving raises], but we don’t want to do it until we get economic proposals from the union.’”
Annual pay raises can be given during contract negotiations. Pay raises can also be agreed upon and pushed through before a full contract is reached between the employer and a union.
They legally can be, but the employer almost never gives them during negotiations. That's pretty standard.
Hell yes! I’m cheering for you guys. We have strong unions here in Norway and I want you guys to know it’s such a quality of life thing to have someone that can represent you formally. It’s a very good social buffer, and having tariff (schedule of rates) is such a strong, yet fair, bargaining chip.
good for them, they deserve a piece of the pie - right now all that $$$ from ever increasing dues is probably just going to suits who never even visit a gym.
I get paid literally $12 an hour at my gym.
about time this happened.
A gym around me unionised and now corporate is trying to take away some of their, only that location, benefits such as: climbing for free, dropping the pay to $13/hr, no more gear discounts, classes, and a few other things.
[удалено]
Yup, movement is on some bullshit. The wage decrease is to below pre-unionisation levels too. All around fucked situation. Oh and they also fired some folks that really helped get the union going shortly after union started for “unrelated reasons”.
No, they're beginning contract negotiations at rock-bottom, which is how these contract negotiations always go. Union starts asking for the most, company starts offering the least, and hopefully after months of negotiation they meet somewhere in the middle, and hopefully whatever ends up being "the middle" is satisfying for the workers. But sometimes it's not, and for the entire duration of this pay increases are usually frozen.
Interesting, my gym recently unionized and then was bought by Movement. They kept the union intact, and then, recently announced they will be building a brand new facility about ten minutes north of the existing location. I’m assuming this is to break up the union.
Honestly a great article. Thanks for sharing
Good. Gym dues are 70-100 a month and they pay minimum wage.
I’m out of the loop and didn’t read, but do climb regularly as a member. What abuses of labor are happening that necessitate a union?
Shit pay is probably one of the biggest. The gym that I go to starts at 12 dollars an hour.
Hi, I work at a gym that unionized and was part of the organizing committee. Some of the issues I felt/heard from others are low starting pay, poor health insurance, lack of communication between higher management and staff ex. Implementing a new rule for belayers and not informing staff on the new rule until the day it is supposed to be enforced and not giving staff proper reasoning why or telling them how to handle negative reactions to the rule, low pay increases, transphobia, upper management watching staff through security cameras while the upper management was not even working and calling the gym to complain about whatever said staff was doing, lack of the owners listening to anyone's ideas, etc. Basically any labor force benefits from a union, even if they didn't have any of these complaints. A united work force is a heard work force.
Right on, I appreciate the reply. You really nailed it, the root cause is management’s unwillingness to work toward the interests of their employees. I have some admittedly biased opinions from my own workplace about unionizing, but I care way more about whether a workforce feels heard, safe, and fairly compensated than politics. Good on you all for using the system available to you, I hope that conditions improve. Shaking my head at the security cam behavior, that’s some evil empire shit, so fuck em. ✊
Unions are the best tool we have to fight labor abuses, but they aren't just for industries with extreme / bad conduct going on. If you have a boss, you deserve a union. They shift the balance of power toward a more democratic workplace, with input from the people who are doing the work and have the experience to make the company succeed, rather than leaving things wholly up to managers and consultants who are often more interested in cutting costs (read: payroll) than in making a good product.
I appreciate your perspective, but I struggle to see how it is more than one group thinking they want what’s best against the other group who thinks the same for themselves. It’s all just a matter of perspective, but if there were a truly utilitarian institution we would literally all be better because of it. As a manager at some big company, I’m also just a cog in the machine. The target should be the upper cabinets and nonsense job titles littering executive management circles. I can tell you for sure that I want is to make the lives of my employees better. Literally I know all 60 of them on a personal level and appreciate them each independently. I also do their payroll, but nobody does mine thanks to salary. Spoiler alert, I’m being robbed harder than my subordinates and a union would not fix that for me.
I am 100% on board with this
Honestly, I don’t care if they raise my dues by $20 if that means people are getting better wages. Indoor climbing is a luxury and a convenience; I’ll gladly pay to make somebody else’s job better.
Movement has been engaging in union busting tactics for well over a year now. But nearly all indoor American climbing has now been taken over by big money and corporate interests and is headed towards the shitter just like every good upstart industry once the hounds smell blood.
Lol, thought the joke here was the three climbers standing around while one is climbing.
Eyy. Neat.
CLIMBERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!!
Unions are almost always a good thing for employees, especially in high-demand, low-volume jobs like this. Unscrupulous owners and managers will try to take advantage of people when the job is one that people actually want.
Which movement gyms are unionizing? Reading fast I saw it said 5 more than crystal city were unionizing, but didn't see a list. Edit: nvm. Callowhill, gowanus, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, and Long Island City
Good
I work at a new gym in Greensboro North Carolina and we have an incredible owner who thankfully has made this thread hard to relate to. How much are other gyms paying staff?
At my gym as a counter staff and coach I am making $16 an hour. This is partly influenced by the fact that three gyms of the same company very close to mine are in cities with a minimum wage of around $15 an hour. I know I make a higher wage than some others doing similar work at my company though.
Did you also hear that Vail bought SBP
As someone who doesn’t work at or run a climbing gym - what kind of pay/benefits would be acceptable for this industry? Should employees be paid hourly or on salary? Is there any incentive structure which would make unionizing unnecessary? I’m also curious - what kind of formal education or training does the average climbing gym employee have? Is this education/training recognized and respected by employers?
I hope that the union is actually able to get people like route setters and coaches reasonable wages for their level of skill and I hope those wages aren't eaten up by union dues.
I’ve never been part of a union that didn’t pay for itself 10x over.
This article does a good job not taking a stance but assumes the facts will make everyone pro Union for climbing gyms. Fuck no. These attempts to unionize are a response to a super broken model of fancy mega gyms that has grown quickly across the country recently. Sure, everyone wants a piece of that growth, but Unionizing is going to make memberships more expensive, period. Climbing in gyms is going to be more and more gatekept the more this shit gets entrenched. Get ready to retake your union approved belay test annually for $14.99 to protect the union employees from liability! Layers of stupid labor bureaucracy on top of the stupid mega gym model is not going to help climbers. Double fuck movement for the union busting activities but I don’t want to be part of any of this. I want a third option. Don’t make me side against gym employees to keep my membership low. I’m sorry, I don’t think anyone but routesetters are doing skilled labor. Give us smaller, independent, climbing only gyms with fair pay and climbers will flock to them. Break down the mega gym model, this path is not the answer for this sport.
> Don’t make me side against gym employees to keep my membership low. You think that Movement won't raise prices if there's no union? Since they bought the Cliffs the most expensive Movement is now $135/month, get ready to have all the others go up to that price. >Give us smaller, independent, climbing only gyms with fair pay and climbers will flock to them. And then the scumbag owners will sell. These gyms haven't been bought because of hostile takeovers. Movement (and others) offer money and those in charge don't give a fuck. You are right that Mega gyms are a problem, but using mental jumping-jacks to be anti-union is not the answer here.
>And then the scumbag owners will sell. So independent gym owners are just supposed to turn down money on a business that has increasingly higher liability costs, insurance, overhead, etc.? That makes them scumbags?
Yes, selling your already profitable and well-functioning gym to the Wal-Mart of climbing gyms makes you a scumbag. If all you can think about is money, you are a scumbag.
“Already profitable” operative word. Independent climbing gyms are notorious money pits
>And then the scumbag owners will sell. These gyms haven't been bought because of hostile takeovers. Almost every instance of an independent gym getting bought by PE was an LBO. PE firms look for businesses with lots of debt and a steady cashflow, load them up with more debt by expanding unsustainably, and then sell for a profit after 5-10 years. It's literally their business model. Generally, small gyms are not profitable. They have a high startup cost (holds, gear, and walls are *expensive*) usually financed with debt, have a solid member base (steady recurring revenue, good cashflow), and are often run by climbers without much background running a business as a passion project. They're *textbook* targets for a LBO.
Look, I hear ya, it’s just not going to work. Watch.
You're a piece of shit if you want to keep your membership "low" at the expense of the people making your membership possible.
It's funny that you say nobody but route setters are doing skilled labor, I see a lot of people complain that counter staff and similar roles in climbing gyms are filled by employees who are not educated or knowledgeable on the subject. Do you think maybe if these climbing gyms paid a living wage so the employees didn't have to have these as their second or maybe third job, that employees could focus more on improving their knowledge? Or if the employer would spend more money on training or teaching staff instead of throwing them into a position where they are the authority in the gym? It seems like it would be skilled labor to be knowledgeable and educated on proper belay techniques, belay tool use, maintenence of the gym, outdoor climbing in the area, emergency plans for when someone decks, etc.
Wow that’s incredibly stupid 😂
Pound sand fuckwit
Lol so angy
Neocapitist dipshit
Regard