Viacom Freelancers: "We Want Teeth"!
Video guy Nick McGlynn hung out this afternoon with the outraged Viacom contractors. (Freelancers? Permalancers? Slave labor?) Actual employees in the eyes of the law, probably, considering how one staffer described her freelance staff. "They're here everyday, these guys comes in Monday to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, weekends, holidays, everything, to work and make this channel run," she told us. Steady paychecks render such commitment completely obsolete—most fully employed people we know support a wide-ranging interpretation of the conventional five-day-workweek. Best slogan heard at the (first!) Viacom Networks Walkout Of 2007: "No one sucks dick for free." (Also great: "No pills, no 'Hills.'" Ha!) Damn straight—we don't even tongue-kiss for anything less than one employer-sponsored retirement plan and a reasonable deductible.