The union representing production assistants is protesting members on Chicago Med and Chicago Fire allegedly losing guaranteed work hours after they ratified labor contracts.
LiUNA Local 724, the Burbank-based union that represents dozens of production assistants on the NBC shows, on Wednesday erected banners and a Scabby the Rat inflatable in front of two production locations amid the labor dispute.
According to the union, the productions had previously guaranteed production assistants 12- and 14-hour days, which provided the workers with overtime pay in addition to their $19.93 hourly wages. But after the production assistants unions ratified their first contracts in early July as the shows were on hiatus, those guarantees disappeared. The union says that, as a result, some production assistants on Chicago Fire saw their weekly take-home pay dip 43 percent.
“Production Assistants are among the lowest-paid workers in television production,” LiUNA Local 724 business manager Alex Aguilar said in a statement. “Workers should not lose the income they have historically relied upon simply because they chose to unionize. These guarantees have existed for years because they provide the livable income Production Assistants depend on to support themselves and their families. We are committed to protecting those standards.”
