Medieval Occasions Union Wins Vote At California Fortress

The union marketing campaign at Medieval Occasions has breached the partitions of a 2nd fort.

Staff on the corporate’s Buena Park, California, location voted 27 to 18 in choose of becoming a member of the American Guild of Selection Artists on Thursday, consistent with a union spokesperson. The union will constitute the knights, squires, stablehands and forged who put at the Texas-based chain’s well-known dinner-theater displays.

Staff at a unique fort in northern New Jersey shaped Medieval Occasions’ first union this summer time, prompting the employees in California to begin signing union playing cards. The corporate has 9 castles within the U.S. and one in Canada.

The Nationwide Exertions Family members Board has no longer but qualified the result of the most recent election, and the corporate has per week to record any objections to the rely.

In a observation, the union referred to as the vote an “vital step to verify a fairer and more secure paintings surroundings, with suitable dwelling wages.” Medieval Occasions may no longer in an instant be reached for remark.

The union’s luck at Medieval Occasions comes amid a wave of latest organizing at U.S. corporations, a lot of it pushed by way of employees’ frustrations over pay and protection all the way through the pandemic. The NLRB has reported an important uptick in employees in quest of elections, with the collection of union petitions not too long ago hitting a 5-year top. Employers corresponding to Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Dealer Joe’s have all noticed a proportion in their U.S. body of workers unionize for the primary time.

Medieval Occasions employees in each New Jersey and California up to now informed HuffPost that they felt underpaid for his or her paintings and sought after the chain to make enhancements on security and safety, bringing up accidents all the way through displays and rehearsals and inadequate crowd regulate.

They stated they was hoping a union may give them a voice at the task and lend a hand spice up wages on the corporate, with a number of announcing they began out close to the minimal salary of their respective states.

“We like what we do,” Erin Zapcic, some of the fort’s queens, informed HuffPost in July. “Maximum instances other people handiest transfer on after they really feel like they have got to. They wish to get started a circle of relatives or purchase a area. You shouldn’t have to go away a task you like as a result of you’ll’t manage to pay for to stay it anymore.”

Medieval Occasions has adversarial the union marketing campaign, calling the union a “3rd birthday party” and suggesting the employees would possibly by no means safe a primary contract. After the New Jersey fort unionized, the corporate knowledgeable employees at different places that they’d be receiving a carry.

The corporate even filed a lawsuit in opposition to its employees’ new union, accusing it of copyright infringement as a result of employees had followed the title “Medieval Occasions Performers United.” The union referred to as the litigation “illegal thuggery” and filed an unfair hard work follow fee with the NLRB, arguing the lawsuit amounted to unlawful intimidation.