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Freelancers protest against MTV The reduction in benefits make the workers walk off the office Sometime back, the freelancers working for MTV Network protested the decrease in the benefits. They came on roads and almost jammed the New York City. Within a week, though the network almost surrendered, many were still unhappy. The freelancers who work permanently there, popularly known as ‘permalancers’ suddenly got annoyed and showed up at the constant unequal benefits to the full time employees and them, when they already come to office for full working hours. Holding opines, “Shame on Viacom”. The majority of quite young employees of MTV wanted that the company fix up a plan where the health benefits for freelancers are condensed from January1st. It is a matter of fact that most of the freelancers working in media do not have commercial benefits at all. Founder of Freelancers Union, Sara Horowitz, says that permalancing is deeply flourished in media industry. Her organization has close to 40,000 freelancers and there have not been protests till now. She added that the unfairness has reached out of tolerable limits. MTV, in turn, decided to rearrange the benefits package. According to amendments, the freelancers can hold on their health care plans and the deadline to choose the plan stretched up to two months. It also said that providing some freelancers, a permanent staff job will be given a thought. Nevertheless, these alterations were not up to the mark for some and they continued the objection. They are of the view that paid time should be restored; tuition repayment and company matching 401(k) should be assisted. ‘Times’ was told that there would not be any modifications. In view of this, NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer said that his management will look in to the matter and will not let companies exploit freelancers like that. Robert D. Lipman told the “Times” that such companies lead to a lot of abuse in the industry as the full time staff is categorized under freelancers to save on tax and benefit laws. MTV Networks owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, some slighter cable networks and Web sites fall under MTV Networks. ‘Times’ highlights the reality that there are channels who follow the no benefits policy, Viacom is one of the few who do give benefits to permalancers, not as much as the full time employees but at least they do receive benefits.