Have you ever wondered about the complexities of labor unions and collective bargaining agreements? In this captivating discussion with Keelin Austin, an in-house labor and employment attorney, you'll be taken on a journey to understand the inner workings of unionized workplaces better. We delve into the pivotal role of the National Labor Relations Act and take a closer look at how unions get their start. Keelin provides valuable insights into when it might be time to think about starting a union and the positive impact it can bring.
Buckle up as we investigate the intriguingly controversial 'Right to Work' laws and their effects on unions and individual workers. Keelin shares his views on the pros and cons of union membership, discussing everything from collective negotiation and job protection to financial cost and the often contentious issue of seniority-based wage scales. Unions are complex entities, and we delve into the realities of ensuring equality when it comes to raises and promotions – it's a discussion you won't want to miss.
As we reach the conclusion of our enlightening discussion, we ponder the potential benefits and drawbacks for companies with a unionized workforce. Keelin helps us understand the integral role unions play in safeguarding employee rights, preventing exploitation, and facilitating dispute resolution. You'll walk away with a clear understanding of how to move forward with unionizing a workforce and where to find support for such a significant initiative. Whether you're an employee, entrepreneur, or HR professional, this episode will give you a comprehensive understanding of labor unions you can't afford to miss.
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Have you ever wondered about the complexities of labor unions and collective bargaining agreements? In this captivating discussion with Keelin Austin, an in-house labor and employment attorney, you'll be taken on a journey to understand the inner workings of unionized workplaces better. We delve into the pivotal role of the National Labor Relations Act and take a closer look at how unions get their start. Keelin provides valuable insights into when it might be time to think about starting a union and the positive impact it can bring.
Buckle up as we investigate the intriguingly controversial 'Right to Work' laws and their effects on unions and individual workers. Keelin shares his views on the pros and cons of union membership, discussing everything from collective negotiation and job protection to financial cost and the often contentious issue of seniority-based wage scales. Unions are complex entities, and we delve into the realities of ensuring equality when it comes to raises and promotions – it's a discussion you won't want to miss.
As we reach the conclusion of our enlightening discussion, we ponder the potential benefits and drawbacks for companies with a unionized workforce. Keelin helps us understand the integral role unions play in safeguarding employee rights, preventing exploitation, and facilitating dispute resolution. You'll walk away with a clear understanding of how to move forward with unionizing a workforce and where to find support for such a significant initiative. Whether you're an employee, entrepreneur, or HR professional, this episode will give you a comprehensive understanding of labor unions you can't afford to miss.
Everything Corporate Strategy:
All the links!
Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze
Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!
Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast. That could have been an email. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark, and today we have a very special guest. Like to introduce Keelan, who's going to give us the rundown on All Things Union, which I know we've talked about in the past but Clark and I know nothing about. So, keelan, would you mind giving us a quick introduction on who you are and what you do?
Speaker 3:Of course. Well, thank you so much for having me. Yes, my name is Keelan Austin. I'm an in-house labor and employment attorney at a media company. So I've been practicing law for about 10 years and with my current company for about six. So as someone who handles labor law issues, I negotiate collective bargaining agreements on behalf of the company, manage labor issues and disputes that could arise. I will also give my disclaimer here. As a lawyer, you know, I got to make sure that I say my opinions are my own and are not reflective of any views of my company.
Speaker 1:Like we should probably do this at the front of every podcast.
Speaker 2:Just retrofit this Anything I ever say is my own personal view and never reflective of corporate strategybiz, because it is a respectable community and company.
Speaker 1:We are 93 episodes in and it took us bringing on a lawyer to realize we should probably put that up at the front. Well, thank you for joining us today, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:I've got a really dumb question about your description of your role. What is a collective bargaining agreement?
Speaker 3:That is not a dumb question and I appreciate it because I think that's central to the whole conversation about unions. So a collective bargaining agreement is the governing document that covers all the working conditions of a unionized workplace. So if you have a union and you come in to a company and you say, hey, we want to negotiate over a number of different issues, the document that you're going to end up agreeing on is called a collective bargaining agreement, or a CBA to use the lingo.
Speaker 2:Okay, got it.
Speaker 1:We love the lingo here. I do love the lingo, and this is good. I've got some acronyms for you.
Speaker 2:I'm excited for the acronyms. We love a good acronym CAC. Just a plug for later on. But yeah, no, thank you. I'm happy to know that the first term that you say. I have no idea what it means, so this is going to go really well, I'm sure we're all learning something.
Speaker 1:I love jumping into the deep end. So, keelan, one thing that we've really been trying to do recently after we had a retrospective episode and realized that we start too low level every time, let's take it all the way to the tippy top. What is a union? Tell us like we're stupid, and one of us might be.
Speaker 3:I'd be, happy to.
Speaker 3:So a union is an organization of workers joining together to negotiate with a company. So the goal of a union is to leverage a collective negotiating power to try to set favorable working conditions, favorable pay. Anything in your workplace that you think could be better is often going to be. You're going to have more leverage when you're negotiating as a group. So that's sort of the philosophy behind unions. They're actually protected by federal law. First acronym, I guess. Second acronym because we already went through a CBA. The National Labor Relations Act, or the NLRA, is the federal law that governs and protects unions. So it provides specific rights the right to unionize in the first place and the right to seek working conditions that are better without fear of retaliation from the employer.
Speaker 2:Got it and maybe just to keep it high level too, is how do unions typically get started? I think we've all heard of unions before. There's famous scenes from the office where they threaten the workers. Threatened to unionize underneath bad conditions and that was kind of the impetus for them doing it. But does it ever actually like? Does a company ever start as a company with a union that represents the workers, or is it usually because of some sort of situation that impetizes them starting the union?
Speaker 3:So it could be either one. I will say the most common way is that the workers decide there's a need for the union. So to organize a union, there's a couple different ways you can go about it, but it essentially requires gathering the majority of the workers in a workplace and agreeing that you want to unionize. So then, once you sort of have that majority, you could go to the employer and say hey, do you want to voluntarily recognize us? We formed a union. The employer can say yes, and then you negotiate over that collective bargaining agreement. If they say no, they essentially force an election. And then it works like any sort of political election. They run campaigns, the company tries to convince the employees why they don't need a union, and then the union and the representatives that are trying to form it do the same and try to convince them that they do need a union.
Speaker 3:There's also one other way, which is to go to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, which is the federal agency that is tasked with overseeing unions, and you can actually petition to have them come and run an election. And these rules, interestingly, are a little in flux. At the moment President Biden is obviously the current president. The NLRB is a political entity at its core and it's organized under the executive branch, so President Biden has set an agenda that's very pro-union, so some of these rules actually are sort of in flux. The NLRB has come out with different ways of essentially making it easier to organize a union.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, just in the last week I think, we saw President Biden picketing in the union line for the recent strikes out in Hollywood, which was pretty wild. So it is interesting times and I'm definitely curious if we can hit a little bit more on that later. But back to the beginning. When should someone think about starting a union? And I want to put a preface on this because I feel like Clark said that office episode there's always the unrest, there's the unhappiness. Are there other reasons people would start a union?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean so. A lot of times when we talk about whether or not to join a union, the decision is going to be made for you when you accept a job. So you're either going to accept a unionized position or one that is not unionized, and if you accept a non-union position you do of course always have the ability and the option to organize the union. I will say I think there's some benefits and costs to it. Like you said, there's always things that I think anyone in any job, regardless of how happy you are, wishes they could improve, and sometimes that can be benefited from a union. I think not always. So it's sort of like a little bit of a cost-benefit analysis. So I'm happy to sort of talk through what those costs and benefits are and then ultimately it's a subjective decision. Everyone can look at the same situation and say, yes, this makes sense. Do you unionize here or no, it doesn't. So it really just depends on how strong the benefits are versus the costs.
Speaker 2:So interesting.
Speaker 1:It is interesting and this is going to sound like a joke, but it's not. I think my first brush with unionization was in the Godfather trilogy. That was the first time I ever heard or thought about this as a concept. But historically there was a whole thing about the Italian mafia and unionization and taking advantage of that, and I think that there has always been slants that go both ways pro and con and it is interesting that you can narrow it down to sort of there are costs and there are benefits, and I think that's what I'd like to get to the core of is how do you know when the costs outweigh the benefits or vice versa?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's what the company side always threatens. It's like, well, if you guys started union I think that's the office episode and I actually have been at a company who there was a union for a certain organization of the work. It wasn't like for the whole company but there was a union that supported part of the organization, which was interesting. But it's always like the company kind of threatens you don't want to start a union because it's going to incur extra costs. So the company is going to crack down on consolidating the workforce and all that good stuff. So there's a lot of threatens on that. So I'd love to learn about how does that actually affect, I guess, the company itself and why are they so against it? And I guess, just a dumb question before you go and do, I'm sure the very important details there let's say we had a union at Corporate Strategy Dept is can I be in the union and Bruce not be in the union?
Speaker 3:So it depends on where you're located physically. So I'll take that of that last question first, and then we can work backwards. So, generally speaking, if a position is unionized, then anyone that is in the position is also in the union. The caveat to that is management would not be included. So I don't know if one of you manages the other in this relationship, but the manager is not going to be part of the union. The union should be just the working class, and supervisors are specifically excluded.
Speaker 2:Man, it sucks for you, bruce, I know.
Speaker 1:I've always treated Clark like my manager and now I'm saying that was a huge mistake.
Speaker 3:So then, the reason I said it depends on where you're physically located is because there's a concept called right to work, which is a series of laws, and they're often in place in the South and Midwest and generally are more politically conservative states and essentially these state laws guarantee that an individual worker can't be forced to join or pay dues to a union, so a worker can still benefit from the collective bargaining without actually having to join the union or pay dues, and that is sort of couched as a good thing for workers, although I will note that these laws are generally meant to weaken union infrastructure, because unions require and they rely on dues to support their employees and to be effective representatives, so you need all the infrastructure that goes into the union. So it does depend on where you are whether or not you would have to be in the corporate strategy union or not.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard about right to work numerous times and I knew that it had to do with unions, but I didn't realize it was such a localized or South versus North type situation. And it makes sense, because I do believe there are a lot more unions in the Northeast and the West Coast than there are in the Southeast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's about half the states have these right to work laws, so the unions are a lot weaker in any state that has one of those operating.
Speaker 1:Is that so in in a southeastern state when there is right to work? Can that actually hurt the union's ability to negotiate and perform the sort of typically expected union based tasks? They would go off and do.
Speaker 3:It can. Yeah, so what it really does is it? First of all it it makes people a lot more fractured, the workforce a lot more fractured, because they have people that are in the union and, you know, support it monetarily, and then you have people that are perhaps reloading you know to use, I think, probably the most aggressive term in that situation and both of those can be very rational decisions for a worker, but they can be difficult for the union to try to navigate around, which you know I'm talking here about dues and things, and I think that's that's sort of the. To go back to the original cost benefit analysis, here there is an actual literal cost to a union. They do, they do have dues that the union members pay into, and I think and it depends on, you know, it depends on a lot of things what those actual costs are, but there is a little a literal cost, a literal financial cost to joining a union. I think, when we're also talking about potential downsides, potential costs, you know, I think there's there can be a downside to having all workers treated the same.
Speaker 3:I think that sounds sort of great in theory and it can be for a lot of situations, but that does mean that you know you may be working really hard at your job and you want to go ask for a raise, but the raises, the promotions, are dictated by your collective bargaining agreement and therefore the answer is no. You know you get the same pay that everyone else in your position gets and you know you can sort of revisit it at the time when your collective bargaining agreement expires and you can renegotiate. Alternatively, a lot of, a lot of collective bargaining agreements use a seniority based wage scale rather than you know some other major skill experience etc. So that can be interesting because I think with with you know some of the younger generations, a lot of us and this is you know, anecdotally speaking a lot of us bounce around a little bit between different jobs. So seniority as a marker for pay increases may not always be the best thing.
Speaker 1:Is it? Is it true that it's also difficult to remove someone from a position when they're in a union?
Speaker 3:It can be.
Speaker 3:So this is one of those things where it really depends on what the CBA says right a lot of unions historically have had something that's called just cause in their contracts, which is you know sort of what it sounds like it's you have to have just cause for the termination and that really goes beyond just you know the performance or you know I, we, this person wasn't a good worker and we terminated them. Just cause is a pretty high legal standard that involves this like seven part test of you know where they were and it was their progressive discipline, all of these sort of things that you have to meet. So it is certainly a higher, higher threshold than the rest of us that are sort of just employees at will, assuming you're not in a union.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's super. I can see how it be such a good thing in certain scenarios and then a nightmare and others. Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's the thing is it depends on where you sort of are in, right. You know, yes, exactly like it could be great if you're the person that has your job protected. It also could be not ideal if your co worker, who is not pulling their weight, is the one that has the job protection you know. So it really depends, right. Yeah, as we're talking about.
Speaker 1:You're all sharing the same salary with them as well. So it's like you know again why am I working so hard when you know Jack over there is literally playing solitaire all day.
Speaker 2:You ain't doing Jack.
Speaker 3:So I mean, those are some of the costs, to talk about some of the benefits of the union, which I think you know, most people probably do understand. But there's leverage from collective negotiation. So you know, you get a whole group of people together and you go to the boss and say, hey, we want to raise, you know, or we're going to walk out, which is really the implicit threat in all union negotiations is the possibility of a strike.
Speaker 3:That's leverage, you know, and you don't necessarily have to go out on a limb individually to get wage increases, to get better working conditions. You have a union, that infrastructure that's supporting you. So you have either the union representatives, the shop steward, who's usually the person within the unit, the co-worker, who sort of steps up and takes a leadership role within the unit. You know those are the people that are going to go negotiate the collective bargaining agreement. So the average worker can benefit from some of those things without actually having to, you know, stick their neck out individually.
Speaker 2:Mm got it.
Speaker 3:It's very interesting, that is yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a question, maybe a well statement and then a question. As I mentioned, I've worked in a unionized environment, but more as like a manager. So to your point, like we would have these yearly kind of meetings where the managers would kind of be brought in of like, don't say union If you see employees like in a corner huddling up together, remind them they should be working because they're not all on break, Like basically, it's like break up the collaboration in the workplace so they don't start a union, and it's it was really interesting. Of like, yeah, if you hear mention of a union, you know make sure you report it to your HR representative and have names associated so we can crack down. So they were like very much.
Speaker 2:So like you do not want union to start, so you need to have your eyes and ears open and report it if you see something happening so that the company can get ahead of that. So I guess the maybe to my question if you're a good company, generally I would assume that a union wouldn't even feel necessary because the employees feel like they're, you know, well respected. They feel like they're not the only benefits. They feel hurt all that good stuff. So maybe that's my first assumption. But I guess one of my question is is there ever an amicable situation between a company and a union where they actually both benefit from it, or is it really like the company gets most of the downside if a union is started?
Speaker 3:That's a good question, and I think whether or not it's amicable and whether or not the company has has a benefit from the union is sort of two different things, I think there are plenty of situations in which it can be done amicably.
Speaker 3:I think the vast majority honestly happened that way. You know, the ones we hear about in the news are because of some union is on strike, which is obviously it's something has broken down in their negotiations. But as a general matter, I think a lot of it is really amicable. That said, it doesn't necessarily benefit a company to have a unionized workforce Just at the time. That's sort of a broad, broad statement and it's really just because it adds another layer of complication.
Speaker 3:There's often middlemen involved in conversations that the company would probably prefer to just spend time. Let's kind of use a hypothetical to play it out. So let's do a termination. So if someone is being terminated, that is generally a conversation between the manager, the employee who's losing their job, and that's sort of the end of it. They might go to HR if they have questions or something, but that's sort of there's a conversation, perhaps a follow up, and that's really the extent of it.
Speaker 3:When there's a union involved, there might be a number of inquiries from the union about the termination and what's this person provided with severance? Did they meet the requirements under the collective bargaining agreement? So from the company's perspective, there's more hurdles involved, so it's not necessarily something that's not manageable. The other pieces unions often are asking for concrete financial compensation, sort of things that cost the company money. It could be pay 401ks, pensions, all these sort of things that companies pay for. Unions are often asking for them. So I think that sets up companies, at least in our capitalist society, are generally trying to spend as little money for the maximum result as possible. So I think that sort of is the underlying tension between the two.
Speaker 1:Companies would choose profits over people. What here in this country?
Speaker 2:Well, I can at least guarantee you, bruce, that corporate strategy outbiz. You signed up for a negative business, so we don't we give money to the company.
Speaker 1:So you're only lost money here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no.
Speaker 3:I will say, I mean, you know, obviously we're joking about it. But I will say, you know, a lot of times the companies will say you know, we don't necessarily give away anything in a collective bargaining agreement that we don't, we wouldn't do already. We just sort of make it more complicated by having you know this sometimes 50-hundred page document that's detailing all the specific roles. So I think that's you know from the company perspective why it's sort of a bureaucratic and administrative you know hurdles that they have to jump through.
Speaker 2:Right, oh, my God. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean it. Just it does put things in a weird spot too, and I'm not trying to be corporate clerk here, but it's like if you do have a performance issue and you are generally a good, you know manager, you just have someone who's underperforming. It's like now you have to go through all these extra hoops and, let's say, for whatever reason you know, you're not able to fire that person because of not unjust cause through the collective bargaining agreement or anything like that. Then it's like then they're just in a weird position because obviously they know the intent of what you're trying to do and you can't get rid of them until those things are done. So I don't know, I feel like it just puts people in a really weird spot because it's like well, you knew the intent at least in that scenario. Right, you knew the intent that was trying to happen and it couldn't happen because of reunion.
Speaker 2:At that point it's probably better for you to leave anyways, because you're already, you know, not going to be that person who's in a good bite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could see how that could spiral out of control too. It's like you know this this person needs to be removed, can't be removed Now. They know they need to be removed, like you're saying, and now you've got a situation that's going to hurt probably the culture around them as well.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So, knowing all this, is there a situation you can think of where it makes sense, like just sort of a blueprint, these people should unionize.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say with sort of a blanket statement, but I will say, if there are working conditions that are technically legal yet incredibly inconvenient, potentially unsafe.
Speaker 3:You know those sort of things are. I think those are the situations that are right for a unionizing effort, because there's a concrete list of here are the things that are really impacting. You know our working lives and we want the company to change them, and the only way we can get the company to change them is by getting this. You know, all of the workers together on one page and saying this is what we, this is what we need.
Speaker 2:Hmm, and like, as you think about that, are there, are there representatives out there like for you know, let's say, the National Labor Union? So I did not say this, right, I already forgot the acronym for the national. Yes, yes exactly so are they out like going to companies trying to get people to unionize?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and I think it really goes towards you know, if someone's looking to organize a workforce, the absolute best way to do it is to find a union that already exists and bring them on to help unionize your workplace, because they're going to know all of the various laws, all the various regulations. Like there are a lot of hurdles to jump through. You know, like we're talking pretty high level, like you just need a majority of people, but there are, you know, some very specific steps that you need to follow. So like, for example, you know some of the unions that are in the news right now, like the United Auto Workers. If you are an auto worker at an auto plant, like that is already an existing union and you are interested in organizing, you go to the UAW and you say, hey, we make.
Speaker 3:You know catalytic converters. Do you want to come in and talk to me and some of my colleagues about why we could benefit from union membership? Those are. There are a lot of unions out there already and they are generally in the best position to help a new union get off their feet, especially if you know, even if it's an area or an industry that might be slightly different than the existing union. They're at least going to have a pretty good blueprint for how this works.
Speaker 2:And I would assume that the larger that union grows in that industry, the more leverage they have for the industry too. So there is some benefit for like the, the labor union as a whole, to like go out and recruit to get more unions created in the industry, to give them more leverage.
Speaker 3:Yes, for sure. So I mean, one good example of that is the Writers Guild, which is currently in the news because of the Hollywood writers. But you know, I said I work for a media company. Right now there's a big push by the Writers Guild to unionize, like podcasting employees. So you know, not necessarily something that you would immediately associate with, you know, the Writers Guild maybe would or wouldn't, but they're certainly expanding their union to cover some of those, some of those workers, which gives the workers the benefit of having this large, well established union to help them negotiate. You know, new agreements and things. So yeah, you certainly see unions expanding into newer industries.
Speaker 1:Is there, and maybe this is not a question that can actually be answered, but when companies get massive, oftentimes the little person disappears. And I'm wondering does the same principle apply to unions? When they get so big, Do they ever lose focus on the individual that they're trying to support?
Speaker 3:You know, I'm sure there are situations where it happens. I think as a whole, they focus a lot on categories of employees. So this is also when we're talking about negotiating an agreement. You know you're putting it together, what are the different job categories, what are the wage scales for each of the jobs. But that is one part of what unions do. What they also do is, you know, if an individual has a specific issue that they think is either potentially a violation of the collective bargaining agreement or maybe it's just something that they want to bring to the union and see if the union can sort of back them up. They can do that. You know, some of these larger unions might not have the ability to sort of like help every single individual, depending on what might be going on, but that is part of their mandate as a union is to represent the individuals as well as the collective.
Speaker 1:That's good. I'd like to hear that, so you know. I know we're already 30 minutes in time flies when we're talking about work on this podcast, but the one question I had and I don't know if you have a final question, clark, but if someone who heard this episode and thinks you know everything that I've heard today sounds right for me I'm interested in unionization. Do you have a place that could go to learn more, or like learning resource or something they could utilize?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, it's something we've already talked about the National Labor Relations Board, which is perhaps surprising given it's a government agency, but the website is pretty good. What?
Speaker 1:Government agency website is good.
Speaker 3:I know it sounds like funny to say that, but no, I mean it has a ton of information on how you unionize, where you want to go. They have offices in a lot of the major cities, so you know that's always the best starting point. The other piece of it is just, you know, trying to find out if there is already an existing union in your industry that might be able to help. Because I think I you know I don't want to beat a dead horse, but getting a union that's already existing, that knows how to work the system, is going to be the best chance of success for organizing a new unit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't have any additional questions, maybe more of a statement that, yeah, exactly what you're saying. It's like if you're an individual and you think this is an opportunity, find out at one of your companies and one already. So try to, like you know, do some Googling on the side. Don't make it explicit to your company. That's what you're trying to do, because you kind of have to operate under the scenes of like you don't want people to know you're doing this. But it is important you find, like if it is an industry, it's good to know like it's industry based, so you can like kind of look up at different companies or reach out to people who might be in the same industry to ask the questions. That won't harm your reputation at the company.
Speaker 2:But I think there's a lot of pros to the worker and be able to do that kind of stuff. And of course, I think, at least in a lot of knowledge work. Now, you know, most people can just hop jobs and, thanks to you know, the pandemic and a couple other things is now remote work is more widely accepted. So generally it's probably faster to pull Plannie and exit your company. But if you generally, you know, want to stay in the same spot or you're having trouble finding other jobs and you want to improve the working conditions where you are and you think the company could be better because of it. It's probably worth, you know, exploring this option and seeing what you can do. So it was awesome discussion and really just appreciate you answering our questions, no matter how dumb they were.
Speaker 3:No, they were not dumb at all. And the one thing I do want to sort of leave everyone with, because I think this is a good takeaway regardless of whether or not you have a union job, the NLRA actually confers rights to all workers, regardless of union membership. So there's no company can prohibit its workers from discussing their pay or their working conditions with coworkers. So, union not union, that's just a protection that all workers have and it's one that I don't know that everyone knows about, especially when we talk about compensation. Like you know, that's always a little bit awkward. Some people don't want to talk about their pay, which is fine. You should never be forced to. But a company can't say you are prohibited from talking to your coworkers about how much you are paid or your working conditions. So I think that that's what I would leave everyone with.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's great. Yeah, I didn't know that that was actually protected. Clark and I have talked about this in the podcast before. You know finding comfortable people you can share that with and kind of figure out and evaluate if you're compensated correctly as part of our our CAC algorithm. But to know it's protected is actually super cool. Now we can talk with confidence in the future.
Speaker 3:Yeah great, I love that Thank you and you know.
Speaker 1:my takeaway is I'm just going to keep nlrbgov in a tab whenever I screen share with leadership, so they just see it menacingly. You know, give them, give them a little scare.
Speaker 3:Yeah, make everyone sweat a little bit.
Speaker 1:Start to get those interesting Slack messages. Thank you so much, keelan. We truly appreciate your time here. I knew 0% of what you went over today, so I'm sure our listeners got a lot out of it as well. Just thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. This is great Good and when Bruce tries to start the union, I'm sure he'll reach out to you. I'm sure he got his union.
Speaker 1:I have this manager. He's just breathing down my neck all the time. So, for our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode and we appreciate you. If you have more questions and are not in the conversation, get in our Discord. The way you can do that is by going to our website, corporatestrategybiz B-I-Z Biz stands for business and from there you can get to our Instagram, twitter, discord, linkedin profile. I mean, we got everything. There's no reason you can't get in touch with us, and if you have a cool topic or something like this you want us to cover, let us know. If we can't find the answers ourselves, we'll source the guest and bring them in, like Keelan. So thanks again to our outstanding guest, keelan, for joining us today. If you guys liked the episode, be sure to give it a nice review, the podcast in general. That'd be wonderful and we appreciate you and we look forward to episodes in the future. So, as always, you want to say something, clark?
Speaker 2:No, I just wanted to chime in to say also never miss an episode. If you want email reminders straight to your inbox, you can go to the website and do that. You can also submit topics there and obviously join the Discord, because you can do that more direct there and engage with the awesome community, as Bruce mentioned. So yeah, absolutely get involved.
Speaker 1:You know, shout outs to Clark for making that happen. It's not every day that Clark provides a service as useful as the newsletter.
Speaker 2:Not every month, not every six months, maybe even not even two years do I do anything for this podcast. So you know it's a, it's definitely a blessing.
Speaker 1:when it happens, Be sure to give Clark that shout out in the Discord, thank him for that newsletter. Good, it's actually great. I'm super impressed. So thank you, clark, and thank you listeners for joining in. As always, I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We'll see you next week.