by Aaron Hanson, President

Last week I took my family to the Great Wolf Lodge. As I careened down the red slide and splashed to a stop, I noticed a young lifeguard walking along toting a full body life size CPR dummy across the facility. I was curious what he was doing, but the interested soon passed as my five-year-old son pulled me under the massive splash bucket. A few minutes alter, en route to the lazy river, I noticed the lifeguard again, this time he had gathered other lifeguards around him and they were practicing CPR and life saving techniques on the dummy. A little in-service training apparently.

A few hours (and way too much chlorine intake) later, we walked past the lifeguard desk towards the elevators to head back up to the room. I stopped at the desk to talk to one of the head lifeguards about their training regimen. My wife gave me one of those "can’t you ever turn it off?" looks as she and kids patiently waited by the elevator doors. The lifeguard seemed almost proud to share that their employees engage in an 8 hour in-service every year prior to recertification. In addition, every lifeguard is required to take part in four hours of in-service training each month, which if the lifeguard was full time, could result in as much as 56 hours a year of in-service training.

Rather impressed, I asked him why he thought they were required to train so extensively. His response, "Sir, we work in a very high liability profession." (Ahem) Eureka!

Contract negotiations

As most of you know, contract negotiations have kicked off. One of the most frustrating things about good faith negotiations is that the process dictates that the discussions are privileged until a tentative agreement is reached. Even though we won’t be able to share with you the specifics, we will try our best to keep you informed of the progression.

Stay safe.

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