OK I like that one.

At last, they got the creative types involved.

Now I have that fucking Herbie Hancock song in my head. THANKS FREELANCERS.

This makes up for twentyfourseven.

Gee. I hope this has more of an impact than Rock The Vote did.

@LolCait: Nothing less than a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission will make up for twentyfourseven.

This is quite amazing. I have never seem even a twitch of an organized fight from MTV employees before. Usually everyone sits still and fumes when their "revised" benefits are patiently explained and then go out after work and get drunk and complain to each other in a totally UNorgazined manner.

@LolCait:
Out on a date, you move in for the kiss--

When a Hendrick's Gin roadblock sweeps down!

Help me. I'm taking this all too seriously!

future freelance friends

Thinking ahead eh? But, awesome stickers. Rather than thinking outside the box, they just flipped it. Time-saving. Godspeed, future friends!

They should make them compete,"'reality" style, for permanent positions.

I'm sporting my sticker tonight! Btw, we have a lawyer looking into what possible legal action freelancers can take, and are collectively refusing to sign any paperwork until we have been told what's in the contract.

Most people who have received their deal agreement, are not at all happy with the new pay setup. Saying that in many cases they will be receiving a 20% pay cut, during weeks that they don't work the additional 10 hours of overtime (to meet the 50 hour work week).

@thenewnewthing:

They're already doing that.

Competition is why they aren't valued employees. They do a job that thousands of kids are dying to do; that's a huge drag on their value as employees. The only way to justify a salary in such an environment is to have amazing talent, and judging by the quality level of the programming I don't think they do. So fire them and get a new crew or cut costs!

I don't understand the sympathy in reporting.

I'm so upset that I don't even have the option to wear my sticker or my t-shirt tonight since they refuse to give me an invite (after working at Viacom for over a year) because I missed a timesheet.

Much better. I'd support it now.

@Carol Gardens: I think it's great, too. Maybe they are feeling inspired by the writers' strike? Go permalancers!
@TheDismalScience: you are being ironic, right?

@TheDismalScience: I politely disagree with most of your politics, and leave it at that, but just as a note: I sincerely doubt that most programming decisions (and truth, they are horrendous) are made by the average PA or video editor.

Strategically placed! It's cute that these workers are trying to be counter-culture. They ARE the machine. Somewhere Upton Sinclair just faced down.

@crookedE:
No, s/he's not being ironic.

When their medical insurance runs out they should wear shirts that say "I Don't Want my HPV."

I can't wait until the CBS people get pissed off and they turn the Eye into a Goatse.

I'll wap it awound my wang. I will. I will.

It'd look better in Russian.

Not that I watch it, but MTV will flip the script (no pun intended... OK... pun inteneded) and will now launch a new reality tv show called WTF based on some freelancer's savvy and rage-y graphic design. Thanks freelancers, You're your, and ours, cancer!

@gefilte_fish_blues: No, that's the LiveJournal Goat you're talking about. It will be soon.

@pissy elliott: Development people and upper level decision makers usually qualify for benefits. That said, lots of creatives "pass through" MTV and eventually more to LA (and NY competition like HBO) to take advantage of more lucrative opportunities. (Talent too--John Stewart, Dennis Leary, Tim Blake Nelson, Adam Sandler, etc. etc. got their first major exposure on low budget MTV shows.)

This is so cute; it's like that Afterschool Special -- you know, the one where everybody gets fired in the end.

What's missing? A MTV-WTF Mascot.
How can people care about this if they don't have a adorable mascot to bond with?

@carol gardens: Good to know! I'm just pointing out that competition among video editors should not be linked to how boring "Run's House" is.

@pissy elliott:

Fair enough. But think of it this way: ultimately, all that matters to a network is that people watch the shows, because advertising follows popular content.

If Viacom isn't profiting, it's because people aren't watching the shows. Given the lineup, I find their troubles completely unsurprising. When this happens, your shareholders obligate the board to increase their equity by limiting costs and increasing revenues.

With TV viewership on an inexorable decline, much like newspaper circulation, it becomes difficult to increase revenues. I'm sure smart people in that company are trying to find ways to do so on the internet and stuff, but it's hard to think of ways to do it on the boob tube. That means all those PA assistants etc. can't contribute to the bottom line in the way they used to. You aren't driving growth with the good work done by the grunts; you're doing it with new areas of the company.

Therefore, that area of the business is going to be aggressively cost-managed. That exposes a lot of people to hardship because nonessential positions are going to be eliminated, benefits will diminish, and perks will decrease. But the worst thing is that it makes the day-to-day less talent-centric, so if the job is desirable it's hard to justify good salaries and benefits. It exposes a huge underlying problem in the media industry: the value of work is hard to describe, the value of talent is seemingly inscrutable, and people are willing to trust a fresh, enthusiastic horde of recent Communications majors over an established vet with hard-to-quantify value and lots of salary demands.

Which just proves what everyone without a Golden Parachute knows... that Christmas is the Holiday for screwing people.

@TheDismalScience: It’s probably also in the best interest of their market to keep the staff as young as possible—another benefit of the revolving door.

@ninety_nine: At first I read that as "where everyone gets fisted again."

I guess it really doesn't make a difference.

@thedismalscience: I mean, yes. Of course. I won't speak for permalancers, but my rage at all this has less to do with my "dignity" as a laborer, and how I "deserve" a nice cafeteria policy. It's more that healthcare is largely unaffordable in the private market, and whether or not you believe in a right to it, one can't deny that in the U.S., most demands for socialized health care are met with a very quick "GET A JOB, HIPPIE." Hey, these permalancers have a job. What's the deal, then? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the Black Bloc!

MTV’s pissed off freelancers show they’re much more creative than any of those striking writers: They’ve flipped the “M” in “MTV” to turn it into a “W,” and changed the “TV” into “TF,” creating “WTF.” And then...

@TheDismalScience: I hear you. The whole thing does strike me as a bit "Help us keep our terrible jobs!" I think I would have walked the fuck out long ago.

That said, I don't buy into the whole "People are just another resource who should be used or abused based on the bottom line" as a philosophy -- I understand it's a reality in many companies, but it doesn't have to be. The Viacom brass and their shareholders determine these policies. There's nothing wrong with the permalancers saying, "Hey, this is fucked up! You should treat your low-level employees better." I mean, outside of the shittiness of the new benefits plan, the dishonesty (trying to get the permalancers to sign a contract before they hold the meeting about said contract) isn't cool. I'm not a liberal -- I don't think the government should be stepping in to tell Viacom what to do here -- but I do think employers should be implicitly expected not to lie to the people they employ, and to handle them with care, just as there's an explicit expectation that employees should handle the work they do for the employer with care.

Sorry, but if we keep writing off the big guy treating the little guy like shit not as "inhumane cockmastery" but as "the market in action," this world isn't going to get any better. (And I won't even get into how if MTV treated these people better, it seems likely that they'd become more useful to MTV.)

@TheDismalScience: This is not new with Viacom. They have always tried to get as much as they can for free, or almost free.

Could THAT have something to do with declining interest in their product?

@pissy elliott:

They don't have the right job, though. That's the real smarm of the argument - the poors aren't worth insuring, because they can be easily replaced by a poor that doesn't have AIDS/Cancer/etc.

Please let's not debate this again but:

The dirty secret of the health care debate is that it's incredibly expensive. This is because we are:

* Fat - 3 of the 5 best-selling drugs are for blood pressure/cholesterol

* Addicted to antidepressants, stimulants, etc.

* Programmed with an expectation to visit the doctor and receive medication for even minor ills

EVEN IF we pay for health care nationally, the moral hazard and the health hazard of socialized care is that it reinforces the bad behaviors that cause health care costs to spiral. The consequence will be price caps, which result in undersupply and excess demand. Then you get lines out the door - ask a Canadian if they can get a checkup for the sniffles or a Brit if they can get into a dentists' office ever. I only support socialized medicine for immediately life-threatening injuries or illness for this reason. Economics are inescapable; that's why it's a dismal science.

@thedismalscience: Yeah, sorry to open up a contentious point. You know, this is the first time I've actually left a Gawker comment conversation with food for thought? And frankly, you and I disagree less than expected (my grandparents' Keynesianism skipped a generation). Gawker: Building bridges since 2003.

@thedismalscience: I'm not sure if Gawker ate my response to you or not, so I'm going to risk a double post and say: I actually disagree with you less than I expected, and have left this conversation with food for thought. Gawker: building bridges since 2003.

Another interesting quirk about Viacom is that Redstone controls the voting stock. So he can do whatever he wants without other shareholders being able to block it. Not that they would, but a hypothetical shareholders revolt would have no influence whatsoever.

"...the public shareholders...own 88% of the combined $48 billion market value of CBS and Viacom, even though their voting stake is a mere 20%."

(FORBES)

@TheDismalScience: The problem is, of course, that it's hard to sympathize with Viacom when the people getting hurt are the ones who have no control over the programming, while there's not a snowball's chance the execs who do control the lineup are going to lose their health care. It's all too easy to suspect they'll get end-of-year bonuses, in fact! And while smart people maybe are trying to find ways to make money off the Internet, on the other hand, maybe they're not. The record labels had a lot of chances over the last ten years to get in on this "World Wide Web thing," they buried their heads in the sand, and now they're whining that they don't have the buggy-whip market cornered anymore.

That's where the free market breaks down: accountability. Aggressive cost management is necessary sometimes, of course -- but the costs that get managed never seem to affect the real decision-makers. At worst, a CEO might be asked to resign...and given a nice golden parachute that could have bought rudimentary insurance for a whole pack of peons.

@grandmoffbastard:

Ideally, I agree with you.

Operationally, the mission of social responsibility is obviously not being imparted by the shareholders. Keep in mind that the board is elected by them - they could elect socially conscious leaders as easily as they elect Chainsaw X.

@grandmoffbastard:

Well, trust me, the free market applies more accountability than any other system. It just applies it towards companies, which use the board-shareholder system to distribute it amongst the workforce. I agree with you 100% that this isn't done well in many cases, because shareholders aren't great at their job. Laziness and inefficiency infect socialist societies, however, because they have a complete lack of the creative destruction that tears down the edifices of these horrible, bureaucratic corporations to replace them with more agile competitors.

Viacom's dying. The grunts may feel it first, and that sucks, but in the end everyone will get theirs.

as someone who was a member of a union shop for many years, i have to say this is incredibly impressive. they are more organized, more vocal and are getting more media attention than any action we ever did. really impressive.

@TheDismalScience: Exactly. And so, even if the permlancers don't win this one, at least they're quote-unquote sending a message to MTV, Viacom, the board of directors, and the shareholders. And Gawker's sympathy (two words I didn't wake up expecting to put together, ever) reinforces the notion that there's a group of people outside of the permalancers who are interested in changing the definition of business as usual.

Hey, Viacom surely might not listen! And the permalancers might do well to be careful not to come off as entitled to the benefits they'd like. But there's no reason for them not to make a fuss. This country was founded -- I love starting sentences that way -- on making a fuss!

@TheDismalScience: Um, isn't the high cost of healthcare due more to the fact that it's a totally unregulated for-profit system where insurance and pharmaceutical companies are raking in billions of dollars? I know that no system, including "socialized medicine" in Canada or Europe, is perfect, but I'm so sick of the blame being heaped on unhealthy people.

@grandmoffbastard:

Fair enough. I'll actually concede a point and say that the moral high ground belongs to Gawker and the permalancers. The economics of the situation, however, still leave me on Viacom's side generally.

@crookedE:

No. The for-profit nature is why we have generic drugs. I would say that the patent system definitely contributes to the cost, but that's essentially a tax we pay for innovation.

All of that conceded, make no mistake: the single most important driving factor in health-care costs is demand. Our demand for health care products and services is unprecedented, and much of it is self-inflicted.

@TheDismalScience: As mentioned above, Redstone controls the voting stock. Every year shareholders get their thick Viacom annual report and proxy statement but even if every single shareholder withheld approval of the board, it would not make a bit of difference. Except that it would be a good story!

@crookedE: Yeah, I don't buy into the moral hazard of universal health care. I don't see people rushing to the doctor just because they can -- going to the doctor is annoying. Malcolm Gladwell (whatever you think of him, I think at least he knows how to present an argument and back it up) wrote a pretty good piece on it.