In California, a set of medieval knights have formed a union. Will they get their fairytale ending? 1843 magazine meets the strikers locked in battle with their employers
. In the 2022 fiscal year, petitions to form unions rose by 53% on the previous one.
For most employees, however, the primary issue is pay. Many knights, like Jesus Lopez, earn less than $19 per hour, well below a living wage for Orange County, where the Buena Park castle is located. “To get a room with somebody else is around $900 [a month],” he said. “And I make about $900 every two weeks.” He is currently residing in his 1995 Toyota Camry – a modern-day knight-errant – living off donations from the strike fund and the income from a part-time job looking after horses.
“If you work here, you’ve been harassed by a guest. Boys, girls, don’t matter. We have some crazy weird guests, like, insane” Last summer, Buena Park employees watched with envy as their colleagues at a Medieval Times castle in New Jersey successfully joined the American Guild of Variety Artists union. Erin Zapcic, 39, who also plays the queen, teamed up with Jake Bowman, a 33-year-old knight, to bring the California castle into thefold. “I’d worked for the company for a long time and had always been a good little soldier so I didn’t think they would suspect me,” Zapcic says.
So far, the company has dragged its feet at the bargaining table. “They’ve shown no intention of reaching a reasonable agreement,” Jay Smith says. Medieval Times has given pay rises of up to 25% to non-union employees while conspicuously excluding unionised staff members, a common anti-union strategy.
The replacement worker told me that the strikers haven’t been as aggressive as he’d expected. But following the Saturday show, there was an altercation behind the castle. A dozen or so replacement workers emerged from the stage door to grab lunch at a taco truck before their next performance. Among them was Nicholas Simmons, 30, fresh from his turn as the show’s villainous Black and White Knight, one of just three of Buena Park’s usual cast members to cross the picket line.
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