LOS ANGELES — Kiran Subramaniam was in her mid-20s when she was hired as an assistant at ICM, one of the Big Four talent agencies in Los Angeles. The job paid $12 an hour. One day, her boss, an agent, tossed a small package at her head after she had placed it on his desk in a way he didn’t like. She ducked, but it grazed her face. When she threatened to quit, he apologized, saying he had thrown the box as a joke. Ms. Subramaniam decided to stay — like a “sad sack,” she said.

Not long afterward, the boss told her that he had parked his Porsche somewhere and couldn’t find it. She left the ICM building and walked past Cartier and Chanel, inspecting the Porsches along Rodeo Drive, none of which belonged to him. She expected another bad reaction when she got back to the office, but all he said was, “I’ll either find it or buy a new one.”

This is the life of the Hollywood assistant, a job that has long served as a proving ground for future executives and producers, schooling them in the ins and outs of the entertainment industry and showing them the reality behind the glamorous facade. But while previous generations put up with it, the new crop of Hollywood’s entry-level workers, emboldened by the #MeToo movement, have banded together in an effort to get better pay and better treatment from their sometimes mercurial bosses.

“I just don’t think we can be silent on certain things anymore,” Ms. Subramaniam, 31, said.

On a recent Sunday, Ms. Subramaniam, an aspiring TV writer who is no longer working at ICM, was among a group of more than 100 assistants who gathered for a town-hall-style discussion. They shared workplace horror stories and talked about how their wages had not kept pace with escalating rents. Increasingly, they said, the industry works against people who do not have outside financial backing, meaning that low-level jobs tend to go to people who can afford to take them.