Victory!

After much pressure, Viacom is finally expanding its benefits for long term temps (or “permalancers”) and they are now getting health insurance!

CLICK HERE to read the internal memo the company just sent out.

As you know, we’ve been holding information sessions over the past several days to discuss our freelance and temporary employee benefits. We’ve had many insightful conversations and heard a number of your specific concerns.

As a result of the input you’ve given to us directly through the sessions and your managers, we want to announce the following changes:

· We are expanding our freelance and temporary medical and dental benefits options to include the United Healthcare plan under which many of you are currently covered. This means anyone who is eligible for benefits in 2008 can opt for medical and dental coverage with United Healthcare at the current rate of contribution, or you can elect instead to enroll in the newly offered Aetna plan.

The Aetna plan has certain advantages that may make it the preferred option for many of our freelance and temporary employees. Based on your input, however, we want to make sure that those of you who prefer the United Healthcare plan have that option.

· As a result of this change, the freelance and temporary employee payroll conversion to Cast and Crew has been delayed until February 1, 2008. Therefore, the December 14th deadline to submit your Cast and Crew paperwork has been postponed. We will inform you of the new deadline early in the New Year.

· We’ve implemented a process for evaluating freelance and temporary employee positions for possible conversion to staff positions. This process is currently underway and decisions will be communicated by January 31st, 2008.