In a national organizing effort, PAs seek better wages, health benefits, and respect.
The slogan “nothing moves without the crew” is particularly applicable to production assistants, one of the least powerful and lowest-paid positions in the industry. Hollywood production assistants do a little bit of everything which can make them easy to exploit.
“I used to call myself a ‘production everything,’” said Savanna Trujillo-Poelma, who has worked as a PA for five years in Denver and Los Angeles. “Then a lovely art designer on one gig told me ‘Do not call yourself that because if you call yourself that, it gives people more gumption to take advantage of your services, of your labor, of your help.’”
Like all workers in the industry, production assistants deserve living wages, respect on the job and all the other things that come with union representation.
The movement to unionize more than 1,800 PAs across the country is a joint effort between the grass roots organization Production Assistants United, and Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 724 which represents studio utility employees.
The more the two organizations communicated, the clearer it became that LiUNA was the union to lead the PAs’ organizing drive.
“For me, it’s a little personal,” said Alex Aguilar, Local 724’s business manager. “LiUNA represents over 600,000 working people across the country—and I mean literally working people, people working on highways, on bridges, in schools. We’ve seen the production assistants on the set. It’s not like they’re invisible, although I’m sure sometimes they feel like they are. We go through some of those same struggles they go through because of what we do.”
The types and duties of production assistants can vary depending on a production’s size. Field PAs work during the shooting of a project, sometimes assigned to a specific department. There are also office production assistants and postproduction PAs—as many as 20 working on a given movie or TV series.
Clio Byrne-Gudding landed their first job out of college as an office PA. After COVID shut down the production, they were brought back to help wrap up the production office before moving to a different series in the summer.
“I was already starting to become frustrated with all the class differences,” said Byrne-Gudding. “It was very hierarchical. There were a lot of inequalities that were made worse because of COVID , and above-the-line got much better treatment in terms of safety than below-the-line folks.”
We’ve seen the production assistants on the set. It’s not like they’re invisible, although I’m sure sometimes they feel like they are.
- Alex Aguilar
They continued to land opportunities both in production offices and on set as well as a visual effects PA on a science fiction movie which Byrne-Gudding called “the best and worst job I’ve ever had because I was carrying around a camera all day.”
After that experience, while they were back home in Rhode Island, Byrne-Gudding began researching labor history and asking crew members why PAs always worked the longest hours with compressed or no lunch breaks for unlivable wages, and why they were the only crew classification that did not enjoy union benefits. When Byrne-Gudding came back to LA and visited the 2023 picket lines, they started meeting commercial production workers who were in the process of organizing with IATSE. Production assistants and Hollywood Laborers were out on the lines in solidarity during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Along with Ethan Ravens and Nelani Rogers, Byrne-Gudding co-founded PA United and began the work toward unionization. The drive has gathered momentum, and supporters from across the entertainment industry and the labor community. In March of 2024, the leadership of Production Assistants United and Local 724 met during the Many Crafts, One Fight rally in the San Fernando Valley. Discussions progressed from there.
Earlier this year, in April of 2025, PA United got a jolt of visibility when they took the stage alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexander Ocasio Cortez during the Fighting Oligarchy rally in downtown LA. A couple weeks later, at a May rally in Burbank in support of their effort, PAs United and Local 774 drew supporters from multiple Hollywood entertainment unions as well as politicians and representatives from city and state labor coaltions. During his remarks, WGAW Board Member Adam Conover recalled a production assistant on his series Adam Ruins Everything who was on set every day, and held the set together.
“This man was a hero,” Conover said. “He had been doing this for at least five years and he planned on doing it for years in the future. He relied on that income to support his kids. If you’re doing a job for upwards of 10 years, if it needs to be done and you use it to support your family, that’s a job that deserves a fair wage, benefits, and safety protections.”
Asked what she ultimately hopes will come out of the unionization effort, Trujillo-Poelma answered: “respect.”
“Respect is not given to those who work during some of the hardest and most tense of times,” she said. “I’m really hoping that this will create change for production assistants in how we’re viewed and how we’re treated.”
2/25/2025 • Robert Fulton
WGAW members stand in solidarity with tourism workers calling for an “Olympic Wage.”
