The company behind MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon, amongst other networks, has decided to take full advantage of their "permalance" workers, a group that makes up over 40% of the people who work for Viacom. These full time employees have been always worked 40+ hour work weeks and been given a standard benifit packages (health, dental, eye) and tuition reimbursement.

That is until they're forced to sign new paperwork that will make all of their 1099 full-time freelancers lose their travel-tax cut, dental benefits and paid vacation time. According to Gawker:

Here's how they were planning on telling people: Viacom sends out Christmas party invites to staff, but permalancers have to go pick them up. (Nice caste system.) So when permalancers went to pick up the invites, they were told "go across the table to pick up your new paperwork."

Here's what we hear from what we believe has truly become the Viacom sweatshop. (One Viacom permalancer estimates that almost 50% of the staff are contract workers at this point.) A 50-hour workweek will now be standard, at least at MTV Digital (which means no overtime until after 50 hours, and no overtime at all for higher-level people, like producers and segment producers), and all will go from a day rate to an hourly rate. Healthcare, which was offered to permalancers after a staggering year of service, will now be offered only to employees who have worked 1,280 hours (25 of those 50-hour workweeks) in any one division. And that's the catch: Get transfered, as often happens, from VH1 to MTV or the like, and you start over on that clock.

Even under threat of being illegally fired, a group of permalancers have been passing around a petition addressed to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman. In it, they threaten to go to the IRS over the recent elimination of their benefits. The deadline for Viacom's serfs to sign paperwork for the new system is Friday.

Tomorrow is the MTVN holiday party at the Hammerstein Ballroom—a party that usually costs the company over a million dollars.........