The labor fight surrounding Chicago Fire and Chicago Med has now reached the cast. Longtime Chicago Fire star David Eigenberg, who plays Christopher Herrmann, publicly threw his support behind the production assistants at the center of the dispute and warned NBCUniversal that a strike could create a major production problem if the situation is not resolved.
Sharing a post from Production Assistants United on Instagram, Eigenberg called out the company over what the union says happened after PAs on Chicago Fire and Chicago Med ratified their first contracts this summer.
“It is a shame that you have gone after our hard-working PA Union,” Eigenberg posted. “These people have worked so hard and for so little all these generations, and they ask for a little something, and you stick it to them.”
Then came the warning. “I hope for your sake they don’t go on strike. You’re gonna have a problem that you created.”
Eigenberg appears to be the first major One Chicago cast member to publicly weigh in on the dispute, adding a recognizable face, and a potentially powerful voice, to a labor fight that has already brought Scabby the Rat to the streets of Chicago.
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What the PAs say happened
As Reel Chicago previously reported, production assistants on Chicago Fire and Chicago Med organized with Production Assistants United and LIUNA Local 724, with Fire workers voting to unionize in late 2025 and Med following earlier this year.
Both groups ratified their first contracts in July. According to the union, however, workers had historically received 12- and 14-hour daily guarantees that were written into their individual deal memos.
Those longer days mattered financially.
PAs earn a reported $19.93 an hour, with overtime kicking in after eight hours. The guaranteed schedules therefore provided workers with a significant amount of overtime income on top of their base pay.
After the union contracts were ratified, Local 724 says those guarantees disappeared.
Some workers were instead scheduled for eight-hour shifts, and the union has said the resulting loss of overtime has cut some PAs’ weekly take-home pay by as much as 43%. More recent Production Assistants United social posts have cited losses of up to 25% for some workers, suggesting the impact varies depending on individual schedules.
Local 724 says the reduction was never proposed or negotiated during bargaining. “Production Assistants are among the lowest-paid workers in television production,” business manager Alex Aguilar said in a statement reported by The Hollywood Reporter. “Workers should not lose the income they have historically relied upon simply because they chose to unionize.”
The Chicago P.D. contrast remains
One of the union’s most pointed arguments remains the treatment of production assistants on Chicago P.D.
Those workers did not organize with Local 724 and, according to reporting cited by the union, have retained their 12-hour guarantees.
That contrast has become central to the union’s public campaign.
Production Assistants United has argued that the timing should raise concerns about whether the reduced guarantees are connected to the decision by workers on Fire and Med to organize. No labor board or court has determined that NBCUniversal retaliated against the workers.
The union has said it believes the changes could amount to an unlawful unilateral alteration of working conditions, though no unfair labor practice finding has been made.
Could Season 15 actually be delayed?
That is where Eigenberg’s comments raise the stakes. There is no strike currently underway, and there has been no official announcement that Chicago Fire Season 15 or Chicago Med Season 12 will be delayed.
But Eigenberg’s warning makes clear that at least one of the franchise’s most prominent actors sees the dispute as serious enough to potentially disrupt production.
Both series are currently scheduled to return Oct. 7 as part of NBC’s fall lineup.
If production assistants were to strike, the operational impact could be significant.
PAs are among the workers who keep television sets functioning at the most basic level, handling lockups, coordinating movement, managing locations, delivering materials, assisting departments and performing the countless logistical jobs that allow shooting to continue.
They may sit near the bottom of the production hierarchy, but a production without them can become difficult very quickly.
That appears to be precisely the point Eigenberg was making.
Scabby has already made the dispute visible
Before the actor spoke out, Local 724 had already taken its case directly to the public.
The union staged informational pickets outside Chicago Fire and Chicago Med production locations, including the Blue Island Avenue firehouse used as the exterior of Firehouse 51.
And, naturally, Scabby the Rat came along. The giant inflatable labor symbol helped turn what might otherwise have remained an internal contract dispute into a highly visible Chicago production story.
Production Assistants United has also increased pressure on NBCUniversal through social media, calling on the company to restore the longtime hour guarantees and make affected PAs whole.
Now one of the faces of Chicago Fire is amplifying that message.
A star standing with the crew
There is something notable about Eigenberg being the first core cast member to speak publicly.
Actors on long-running network dramas generally do not make a habit of criticizing the companies that employ them, particularly while their shows are actively in production.
Eigenberg has been with Chicago Fire since its beginning, making Herrmann one of the franchise’s most enduring characters.
His comments therefore carry considerably more weight than another social media post from outside the production.
And they shift the optics of the dispute.
What began as PAs versus management now includes a star from the show standing publicly alongside the crew. Whether others follow remains to be seen.
For now, Chicago Fire Season 15 is still scheduled to premiere Oct. 7.
But with the union applying pressure, Scabby stationed outside Firehouse 51 and Eigenberg now warning NBCUniversal about the consequences of a possible strike, this fight is becoming increasingly difficult for the One Chicago universe to keep off-camera.
