'We Had No Choice': Why Medieval Times Performers Are on Strike

It’s all fun, games, and chivalry until the lords and ladies of the manor start thinking they can treat their employees like horseshit.

Credit: Brett Banditelli

It’s all fun, games, and chivalry until the lords and ladies of the manor start thinking they can treat their employees like horseshit.

The lords and ladies in this case are the people who run Medieval Times, the legendary dinner-theater experience that features animal tricks, a loose and malleable plot, a rollicking joust, general merriment, and giant chicken legs. The workers are the unionized employees at the company’s Buena Park, California location. And the horseshit, according to those workers, consists of unfair and unsafe labor practices, and low wages for jobs that occur while working in the general vicinity of literal horse shit. (We don’t blame you horses, you’re perfect.)

After a few months of contract negotiations and increasingly retaliatory actions by Medieval Times, the union went on strike earlier this month. Dozens of performers walked out on February 11, and have only shown up to work to picket since then. 

The Buena Park workers unionized late last year with the American Guild of Variety Artists and were the second Medieval Times location to do so following a successful drive at the company’s Lyndhurst, New Jersey locale. Both castles, unionized as Medieval Times Performers United, are now in the process of negotiating their first union contract. 

According to Erin Zapcic, one of the performers who is currently on strike, things started to get hostile with the company as soon as the workers filed for their union election.