Medieval Times Broke Law To Defeat Union, NLRB Judge Rules

A judge at the National Labor Relations Board ruled Thursday that Medieval Times broke the law repeatedly as it tried to fend off a union organizing campaign at its castles in New Jersey and California.

The dinner-theater chain’s violations included firing a union supporter, threatening to withhold raises, trying to get the union’s social media accounts shut down and filing a trademark lawsuit against the union – all actions meant to discourage workers from organizing, according to NLRB Administrative Law Judge Lauren Esposito.

Esposito ordered that Medieval Times “cease and desist” its unlawful behavior, offer reinstatement to the fired worker and reimburse the union for its litigation costs in the trademark lawsuit.

Medieval Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company’s knights, actors and stablehands launched a union campaign in 2022 aimed at boosting wages and improving safety standards around its dinner shows, which feature live stunts on horseback. Workers managed to unionize two of the nine U.S. castles through NLRB elections, joining the American Guild of Variety Artists, or AGVA.

But Medieval Times resisted the organizing campaign and tried to prevent it from spreading to other locations, as HuffPost reported at the time. Workers filed a slew of unfair labor practice charges alleging they were retaliated against for supporting the union effort.

In 2022, Medieval Times sued the union over the name and logo for its campaign, Medieval Times Performers United, claiming it infringed on the company’s intellectual property — a move the union called “unlawful thuggery.” The complaint was eventually thrown out.

Medieval Times also managed to get the union’s TikTok account shut down after filing an intellectual property complaint with the social media platform, as HuffPost reported at the time. It filed a similar, though unsuccessful, claim with Facebook.

Esposito wrote that the trademark lawsuit was designed to “retaliate against the Union for engaging in its successful organizing campaign,” and its outreach to TikTok and Facebook was an attempt to “interfere with, restrain, and coerce employees” by muzzling them on social media.

She also found that Medieval Times’ CEO, Perico Montaner, personally violated the law when he told employees he would have to withhold raises because the New Jersey workers had petitioned for a union vote. She deemed his remarks “unlawfully coercive.”

Esposito’s ruling can’t do much to help the union campaign, which dissolved last year. The AGVA notified the company it no longer intended to represent workers at the unionized New Jersey and California castles after it became clear the union no longer had enough support to win a protracted contract fight.

But the ruling validates what Medieval Times union activists maintained all along: that the company was breaking the law in an effort to crush the organizing campaign.

Medieval Times is likely to appeal Esposito’s ruling to the NLRB’s board in Washington, where the case could sit for months or potentially years waiting for review. President Donald Trump recently fired one of the board’s Democratic members, eliminating its quorum and making it unable to issue decisions.