It's Monday, April 6th, 2026.

From Peachfish Productions, it's the gist.

I'm Mike Peska.

And you know, I have a very nuanced or possibly muddled view of unions.

I'll cop to muddled if you want to call it nuanced after you hear me out.

Do so, please.

I'll take the compliment. So I've been in good unions. I've been in bad unions. I'll be specific. Good union was NPR. You'd work for 12 hours and they'd pay you for 12 hours. And the last four hour chunk of that would be time and a half. You wrote down what you honestly were because they assigned you to work. Let's say they said, Mike, go to the World Series, and you'd show up. You got to show up around 4.30 batting practice. And this thing goes until midnight and then you'd go home and you file or go to hotel room and then you'd file for morning edition. I'd say you, but I'm clearly talking about me. You could probably infer that from the use of the word mic. So what is that? That's maybe a 4 p.m. to 4.m. 4.30 to 4.30 gig. They also pay you for travel, but I'm not

even going to soak them for that. So that's 12 hours and you get paid for it. Now, when you do the

Olympics, it's overseas, so there's some sort

of set rate fee. And there was also a contingency where, especially someone like me, who'd always be

working very long hours during key sporting events, they'd say you want a personal services

contract, which will pay you a flat fee and you don't have to work out those timesheets.

And even if I did say yes, it wasn't taking, I wouldn't take a worse deal.

But the reason that I, as the unionized employee, would have the leverage to be offered that

deal was because the union guarantee, I would get paid time and a half or anything over 12,

I think double time into the 13th hour.

Great union, wrote down what you worked.

They paid you for what you worked.

Then, before then, I was in the union for WMYC.

And it seemed to me that their main job was not getting terrible people fired.

So there were engineers who were violent, possibly mentally off.

And one of these engineers was dismissed. But of course,

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