Lyndhurst's Medieval Times workers vote to form chain's first union

Workers at the Middle Ages reenactment venue Medieval Times voted Friday to form a union, marking one of the latest leisure and hospitality businesses to organize amid a labor push coming out of the two-year coronavirus pandemic. 

The royal performers at the Lyndhurst venue voted 24-11 to form a union — a first for the dinner theater chain — to secure higher wages and safer working conditions, according to a Friday announcement.

Friday’s move affects actors, jesters, trumpeters, stunt performers and stable hands, but not the wait staff, according to the announcement by Medieval Times Performers United, which will join the nationwide union the American Guild of Variety Artists. 

“We will use our collective voice to bargain a strong first contract,” reads a Friday statement from this latest chapter of the union. “We look forward to working with management to create a fairer, safer, and more enjoyable Medieval Times. Together, we will build a workplace that allows us to thrive while doing the work we love.”

Union officials complained that its members-to-be suffered with staffing shortages coming out of the coronavirus reopenings, as well as security issues and low wages. Representatives from the Texas-based company, which has nine other locations outside of Lyndhurst, could not be immediately reached for comment. 

“Let us be clear about what these employees ‘won’ today,” Medieval Times CEO Perico Montaner wrote to employees, according to the news outlet Gothamist. “They ‘won’ the privilege of a third party sitting across the table from the company and asking for things. The law is very clear, a company must negotiate in good faith — which we will do — but a company is not required to agree to any proposal that it does not believe is in the company’s best interest —which we won’t."

Montaner added: "Collective bargaining is an uncertain process.  Half of all new unions never reach a first contract.  There is no time limit on negotiations. Ask yourselves, can you really know what the Lyndhurst, New Jersey, employees ‘won’ until you see their contract?”

Hotels, restaurants, theme parks and other parts of the leisure and hospitality sector have struggled to fill positions over the past two years as COVID-19 business restrictions waxed and waned and the nation rode out a roller coaster of new variants and the fear of a recession. 

Workers at many of those establishments, such as Starbucks and Amazon, have in turn opted to form labor unions. The union that Medieval Times' workers are joining has members at Radio City in Manhattan and Universal Studios Hollywood in California.

“The low wages, irregular schedules and difficult work environments that are common in the hospitality industry have contributed to the shortage of workers willing to fill these positions,” Todd Vachon, a Rutgers University professor and director of the school’s Labor Education Action Research Network, which partners with worker-rights groups, said in March.