Production Assistants' Union Drive Gets Boost From Bernie Sanders Rally: 'Studios Will Push Back'
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour stop in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday featured politicians, famous musicians, labor leaders — and Hollywood production assistants.
Echoing the event's ethos of challenging corporate interests and billionaires, labor organizers focused on one of the entertainment industry's most crucial but unglamorous roles made a fiery unionization pitch to the reported 36,000 attendees. In the process, they put a spotlight on wages and working conditions as they described production assistants as being primed to build 'working-class power.'
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Green Day Blaze Through Headline Set, Charli XCX Brings Star Power at Coachella Day 2
Bernie Sanders Blasts Trump and Musk During Surprise Coachella Appearance
SAG-AFTRA and Advertisers Reach Tentative Agreement on Successor Contracts
Thousands of production assistants are 'sick and tired of being underpaid, overworked and unprotected,' said LiUNA Local 724 business manager Alex Aguilar, whose Local is heading up the union-organization effort, in a speech. 'That stops!'
Organizer Clio Byrne-Gudding, a production assistant who has in the past worked on Rebel Moon parts one and two, addressed production assistants directly: 'Will you continue to allow the corporate class to walk all over you and your coworkers? Or will you stand up and put your talents to use to protect your life and the lives of your fellow PAs?'
The appearance was the highest-profile yet for LiUNA organizers aiming to create a nationwide production assistants' union. The group went public at a Labor Day parade in 2024 and now have organizers in New York, Texas, Illinois and Georgia, Byrne-Gudding said on Saturday.
The group's key objectives are to raise wages, address turnaround times and institute union-administered health insurance coverage.
But, as organizers mentioned at the rally, they're also looking to revolutionize a typical career pathway for entry-level workers in Hollywood. 'We're organizing not just to fix one job but to transform the entire industry for future generations of workers,' said Ethan Ravens, another organizer with the group.
Ravens spoke to waking up at 2 or 3 a.m. for the job, working 16-plus hour days and then getting 'five or less hours of sleep' before repeating the cycle the next day. He said he knew PAs who had fallen asleep at the wheel while working productions' sometimes-punishing hours.
'Some of Hollywood's biggest players are the largest, most profitable companies in the world,' Ravens said in his speech. 'We're talking about Apple, Disney, Amazon. And as a PA, we're expected to carry the weight of these Hollywood productions on our backs.'
Organizer Nalani Rodgers speculated on how Hollywood companies might respond to the half-a-year-old union drive in a speech. 'Studios will push back, they'll tell you you're just lucky to be here, that things will never change and it is what it is,' she said. 'You and your fellow workers must resist giving into fear.'
The appearance preceded a rally that will take place for the organizing effort on May 4 in Burbank. The organizers are ramping up their efforts at a challenging time for crew members, especially in Los Angeles, where on-location production days fell 22 percent in the first quarter of 2025 compared with a year prior. State-wide, film, TV and sound jobs were down 25 percent in California in 2024 compared with 2022, before the double strikes of 2023.
Byrne-Gudding acknowledged that they have seen PAs endure 'joblessness and poverty' during their time in the industry. 'Things have been hell in Hollywood and in the world,' Byrne-Gudding said.
Still, Byrne-Gudding urged their cohort to keep their eye on the ball. 'Many in the film business would tell you that winning protections for PAs in impossible. But you know what? Here in the film business, we do the impossible on a daily basis.'
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started
Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023
Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Summer 2025 is coming. It needs a name.
We independently evaluate the products we review. When you buy via links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read more about how we vet products and deals. Summer 2024 was slime green — edgy, messy and ready to party long after clubs had closed. It was also self-aware, slightly depressed and anxious about the future. Charli xcx's culture-defining album Brat embraced 'bumpin' that,' playing 'club classics' and examining how 'the apple don't fall far from the tree.' Even Kamala Harris was brat. It was Brat Summer for a few fleeting months, then it was nothing. As the weather gets warmer, the days get longer and social media feeds flood with vacation photos, the pressure is on to pick a name for summer 2025. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Charli (@charli_xcx) Before Brat Summer, other years were dubbed Tomato Girl Summer (2023), Barbie Summer (also 2023), Rat Girl Summer (2023), White Boy Summer (2021, before it was co-opted by hate groups) and the Summer of Scam (2018). I remember Mamma Mia Summer in 2018 and Pokémon Go Summer in 2016. Depending on your social media algorithms, which have become more personalized over the years, you might have seen a different trend get anointed. But just as the seasons change, the summer branding must also. Charli xcx herself has declared the Brat era over — we are formally not allowed to revive it in 2025. At Coachella in April, she proposed 26 options for the season, based around musicians and filmmakers with forthcoming releases: Lorde Summer, Addison Rae Summer, Celine Song Summer and Joachim Trier Summer, to name a few. letterboxd member @charli_xcx has spoken 👀 what summer are you going to have?#Coachella — Letterboxd (@letterboxd) April 20, 2025 But why does summer need a name at all? Valerie Fridland, a linguistics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Yahoo Entertainment that the trend is a 'quick and dirty callout to the season's cultural moment.' 'By naming or assigning a label to something, it fixes or sets that shared experience as something relatable and easily referenced by others,' she said. 'Language is all about expressing collective experience and shared ethos — and summer, with its long days, hanging out, fun in the sun, laid-back vibes, is something we've been enculturated to identify and feel good about since we were little.' Brat Summer was one of the last times since Hot Girl Summer in 2019 that one unifying summer name emerged over dozens of others. Alfred Goldberg, a brand strategist, told Yahoo Entertainment that the Megan Thee Stallion-inspired trend kicked off a new summer naming craze because it tapped into 'both personal branding and cultural zeitgeist.' 'That shift really came with the rise of social media and meme culture, where everyone can participate in shaping a seasonal narrative,' he said. Algorithms are partially to blame, but because the compulsion to name summer is tied to emotion and community, it can also be a personal exercise. What you are seeing on your own feed shapes your perception of culture and how you portray yourself in your own posts. Weirong Li, a Gen Z communications strategist and emotional intelligence coach, told Yahoo Entertainment that naming summer is a way for people — particularly younger generations — to engage in 'emotional self-branding.' There are a lot of good feelings associated with summer, including a 'symbolic reset,' Li explained. Brands like tapping into that vibe. They embrace and promote branded summers, and sometimes declare their own. Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist and self-help book author, told Yahoo Entertainment that summer symbolizes freedom. Naming it taps into the 'playful, performative' energy and 'lets people reinvent themselves' for a season. 'Psychologically, giving summer a name creates a cultural script. It offers people a sense of control and identity in a world that often feels chaotic,' he said. 'And for brands, it's a dream and a gold mine. These names turn into movements that fuel engagement, drive trends and make everyone feel like they're part of something bigger.' Though the way the trend is driven by social media and algorithms seems uniquely modern, the desire to name summer is not an entirely new phenomenon. It began with the Summer of Love in 1967, when antiwar protests, live music and psychedelic drug use made hippies trendy. Flash forward 30 years later to Seinfeld. In a 1997 episode, George Costanza gets fired and decides to use his severance to have a fantastic, lazy summer. As his plans fall apart — his laziness makes his muscles atrophy and he ends up in the hospital — he morosely declares, 'This was supposed to be the Summer of George!' Though Costanza's summer branding fell through because his circumstances took a turn, he could still have redeemed the concept if he had gotten other people on board. Noël Wolf, a linguist and cultural expert at the language-learning platform Babbel, told Yahoo Entertainment that the summer naming trend at its core 'taps into a powerful linguistic instinct we see all the time — the human drive to label and frame experience, and to find community in language.' 'While Brat Summer and Hot Girl Summer are obviously marketing strategies, there is a level of comfort in being able to capture a collective mood and cultural rallying cry,' she said. 'Social media gives people the tools to remix a summer label into something personal: Goblin Mode Summer, Soft Girl Summer, Delulu Summer — each one tweaks the archetype, individualizing a person's experience, mood, values and humor.' So what will summer 2025 be named? Look to whatever is identified by a cultural tastemaker, amplified by algorithms and sustained by brands over the next few weeks. I'm partial to Joachim Trier Summer myself, coming off my trip to the Cannes Film Festival where the filmmaker declared 'tenderness is the new punk.' But I wouldn't mind Sardine Girl Summer, either.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Squid Game' Teases a Final Showdown in Full Season 3 Trailer
The Squid Games are just getting started. In the full trailer for the third and final season of Netflix's hit series, protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is back in the games after the failed rebellion that ended season two. This time, the stakes are raised and the competition in the very deadly games is even more deadly. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Squid Game' Star Lee Jung-jae Is Happy With How Series Ends But Is "Very Nervous" For Fan Reaction Netflix's 'Wednesday' Releases First Six Minutes of Season 2, Officially Confirms Lady Gaga Guest Role 'Stranger Things' Premiere Dates Revealed for "Blockbuster" Final Season The season three trailer, released Saturday at Netflix's Tudum fan event, shows Gi-hun questioning the game's powers: 'Why didn't you kill me? Why did you keep me alive? Why did you let me live?' he screams. It also shows players making their way through a disorienting maze and playing a deadly game of jump rope before Gi-hun comes face to face with the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun). Watch it below. Squid Game season three marks the final season of Netflix's global sensation created by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Viewers go back into the games with Gi-hun, Player 456, on June 27 when all episodes drop on Netflix. An episode count has not yet been announced, though six has been reported. Season two had ended on the devastating cliffhanger of the games being incomplete and Gi-hun and his subordinates once again being held captive. After winning the Squid Games in season one, Gi-hun was determined to dismantle them from the inside. The seven-episode second season explored Gi-hun's effort to do so, culminating in a finale where he found himself thwarted by Front Man, the enigmatic game leader played by Lee Byung-hun who was revealed to the audience — but not yet to Gi-hun — to be Player 001. Front Man executed Gi-hun's best friend, Player 290 Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), as a warning about the consequences of his rebellion. New imagery around season three had previously revealed two new games — a massive gumball machine dispensing red and blue balls (representing the Xs and Os vote that will determine their fates) and the other, a new twist on the iconic Red Light-Green-Light game. The hope for the final season may lies in the ongoing outside mission to infiltrate the headquarters. Familiar faces return for season three: The Front Man, detective Hwang Jun-ho, and players Myung-gi (Player 333), Dae-ho (Player 388), Hyun-ju (Player 120), Yong-sik (Player 007), Geum-ja (Player 149), Jun-hee (Player 222), Min-su (Player 125), Nam-gyu (Player 124) and the pink guard No-eul. The third season concludes the story from Hwang, though the creator has shared several ideas about where he could spin off the franchise, which has already spawned reality series Squid Game: The Challenge and Squid Game: The Experience, a touring activation where fans can play games like the multiplayer video game Squid Game: Unleashed. Produced by Firstman Studio, executive producers include Hwang and Kim Ji-yeon. Head here for more on what to expect from season three. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Stranger Things' Premiere Dates Revealed for 'Blockbuster' Final Season
Netflix has finally revealed when the long-awaited and fifth and final season of Stranger Things will debut. The streamer announced the final season of the coming-of-age sci-fi hit will air in three parts late this year. The first will premiere Nov. 26, followed by part two on Christmas and the series finale on New Year's Eve. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Squid Game' Star Lee Jung-jae Is Happy With How Series Ends But Is "Very Nervous" For Fan Reaction Netflix's 'Wednesday' Releases First Six Minutes of Season 2, Officially Confirms Lady Gaga Guest Role Adam Sandler Swings Away in Full 'Happy Gilmore 2' Trailer - With One Classic Throwback Line The news was announced at Netflix's Tudum fan event at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles Saturday, with stars Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp running through some look-back clips before revealing the dates for season five via a teaser (watch it below). Back in January, Ross Duffer said about the final episodes, 'We spent a full year filming this season. By the end, we'd captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It's like eight blockbuster movies. It's pretty insane.' Matt Duffer added, 'At the same time, we think it's our most personal story. It was super intense and emotional to film — for us and for our actors. We've been making this show together for almost 10 years. There was a lot of crying. There was so much crying. The show means so much to all of us, and everyone put their hearts and souls into it. And we hope — and believe — that passion will translate to the screen.' In November, Netflix announced the season five episode titles to tease the story arc of the season: 'The Crawl,' 'The Vanishing of [censored for now]' 'The Turnbow Trap,' 'Sorcerer,' 'Shock Jock,' 'Escape From Camazotz,' 'The Bridge' and 'The Rightside Up.' The plan is also to have a bit of a time jump going into the final episodes. 'I'm sure we will do a time jump,' Ross told TVLine. 'Ideally, we'd have shot [seasons four and five] back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that. So these are all discussions we're going to have with our writers when we start the room up.' Netflix has confirmed that the show would jump a little over a year to the fall of 1987, after season four took place in March 1986. The creators have also previously teased upcoming projects in the Stranger Things universe. 'There are more Stranger Things stories to tell and in the works,' Matt said. 'It's a bit early at this point to talk about them, but we're deeply involved in every one — it's very important to us that anything with the Stranger Things name on it is of the highest quality and not repetitive — that it has a reason to exist and always blazes its own path. And also, it needs to basically just be … awesome. Or we need to think it's awesome. And there are a lot of what we think are awesome things in the pipeline.' Stranger Things stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Priah Ferguson, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Maya Hawke, Joe Keery, David Harbour, Winona Ryder and Brett Gelman. For more, here is everything we know about Stranger Things' final season. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
