Workers at 4 Popular Bay Area Rock Climbing Gyms Win Unionization Vote

Workers at some of the Bay Area’s most popular rock climbing gyms have voted to unionize, joining colleagues at five gyms in Southern California that are in contract negotiations with their employer, Touchstone Climbing.

Employees of Mission Cliffs and Dogpatch Boulders in San Francisco, as well as The Studio in San Jose and Diablo Rock Gym in Concord, won their unionization votes on Monday night.

“ I’m very excited; it’s excellent news,” said Max Dolso-Morey, a club coach at Mission Cliffs and a member of the union organizing committee.

Workers will aim to negotiate over wages, safety and other concerns with Touchstone, the largest operator of indoor climbing gyms in the state. Dolso-Morey said one of his motivations to unionize was to advocate for more safety staff at Mission Cliffs. Though hundreds of people may use the gym at peak hours, he said, only one person will be in charge of checking that people are climbing safely, among other tasks.

“ Accidents do happen, and usually it’s because of a lack of safety staff being able to make sure everyone is doing the correct protocols before they climb on the wall,” Dolso-Morey said.

Dolso-Morey said he also hopes unionizing will help workers negotiate for better wages. He said his most recent raise pushed up his wage by 4%, equal to 80 cents an hour.

“ Living in San Francisco is diabolically expensive,” Dolso-Morey said. “If we didn’t love doing this job and being part of this community, we wouldn’t be here. So we feel that we should be paid fairly and treated with dignity.”

The employees, who will be known as Touchstone Workers United, have joined Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

Workers at five Touchstone gyms in Southern California voted to unionize in March of last year and have been in negotiations with the company since September 2024.

Alex Tillett-Saks, outside counsel for Workers United, has filed five separate unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Touchstone on behalf of the workers. The complaints remain open.

“Touchstone has shown a constant and consistent lack of regard for the employee’s desire to bargain a contract,” Tillett-Saks said.

Four of the complaints allege Touchstone retaliated against workers at its Southern California gyms for forming a union, including by increasing employees’ workload, removing employee perks and changing their health plan without bargaining the changes with the union.

One complaint, filed last week, alleges a supervisor at Dogpatch Boulders in San Francisco held a captive meeting with employees to inform them that employees were to take shorter breaks, and did so as a means to chill union activities.

Touchstone Climbing did not respond to multiple requests for comment by deadline.

The company has rapidly expanded in recent years, opening three new gyms in 2024 alone for a total of 18 statewide.

“As any company expands, you get additional layers of leadership, and we want to make sure that no matter how many layers of leadership pop up, the employees maintain an equitable voice when it comes to the direction of the company,” said Tyler Mitchell, who works at the front desk at Diablo Rock Gym in Concord and supported the unionization effort.

The vote at Diablo Rock Gym included fitness, guest and belay staff, as well as coaches. Mitchell said Touchstone challenged one of the ballots, successfully excluding one employee who sometimes works less than 4 hours per week. He added that routesetters, the employees who set the routes clients climb on and work at gyms throughout the Touchstone system, would be in a different voting unit and were not included in the vote.

The ongoing tension between Touchstone and its employees gave way to a routesetter strike in Southern California earlier this year. Some clients of Touchstone are also boycotting the company in support of the ongoing contract negotiations there.

In an FAQ on its website, Touchstone pushed back on the claim that it is not “coming to the table with proposals.”

“Touchstone regularly presents proposals during bargaining. As a company, we have a responsibility to balance the needs of all stakeholders — including principled commitments to our community, business partners, and the environment and a legal duty to shareholders,” the company wrote on its website.

Mitchell said he was expecting more pushback from Touchstone throughout the process and that at his gym, they have a good relationship with their management.

“I think that Touchstone understood that this isn’t something that can really be effectively fought against, and from my perspective, personally, it seems that they accepted that this would happen.”