Production assistants on three shows produced by Warner Bros. Television — Abbott Elementary, George & Mandy’s First Marriage and All American — have ratified their first union contracts.
The staffers, about 15 in total, unanimously voted to ratify the three separate contracts in a vote that ended Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Their union, Production Assistants United, is affiliated with the Hollywood laborers’ union LiUNA Local 724.
“You cannot run a production without production assistants,” Production Assistants United director of organizing Ethan Ravens said in a statement. “The idea that the workers holding productions together should have a union, a voice, health care and a pension is not radical. It is inevitable. These contracts prove the momentum is real, and it is only going to keep growing.”
THR has reached out to Warner Bros. Television for comment.
The deals qualify production assistants on these shows, which all film at Burbank’s Warner Bros. studio lot, for the Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plans that cover other unionized crew members. The contracts enshrine a minimum pay rate of $20 an hour for new hires and $21.22 an hour for returning workers for the upcoming season of each show. Returning workers will earn the higher rate after putting in 50 work days the previous season.
In the case of All American, which already finished filming its final season, the PAs received retroactive health and pension contributions.
The contracts additionally establish holiday provisions like ensuring production assistants who work holidays will receive at least eight hours of pay at “double time,” or double their usual hourly rate. Production assistants will also be paid for hoildays they do not work — essentially receiving paid time off.
As part of the deal, each show will also create a subcommittee devoted to examining career pathways and openings for production assistants.
These contracts improve upon some provisions in the deal that Production Assistants United reached on another Warner Bros. Television show, The Pitt, in late 2025. The Pitt deal defined returning staffers as those who had worked 150 days the previous season and did not contain holiday pay provisions. The Pitt deal has been retroactively edited to match these benefits, says the union.
“The unanimous ratification of these agreements sends a powerful message: workers want a voice, and they want representation,” LiUNA Local 724 secretary-treasurer Alex Aguilar Jr. said in a statement. “The unity shown by production assistants demonstrates the strength of this movement and the power of workers standing together in solidarity.”
Abbott Elementary, George & Mandy’s First Marriage and All American production assistants all voted to unionize in December 2025 after their peers on The Pitt led the way in organizing. Production Assistants United is attempting to replicate these successes on other shows like The Four Seasons, Chicago Med and Chicago Fire, all of which have voted to unionize but have not yet landed a first contract.
