Leading Your GovCon Workforce Through a Government Shutdown

Joe Young

Good afternoon. And, hello and welcome to our GovCon HR… I usually say friends, but I think I must say warriors now.

Declan Leonard

Survivors.

Joe Young

HR warriors. Survivors. So welcome, everyone, to the October edition of the GovCon HR Round-Up podcast. This is episode 21 and unfortunately, I am going to say this is the government shutdown version of the podcast. We were hoping we weren't going to be. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to have this show.

Declan Leonard

They couldn't shut us down, though.

Joe Young

We are still here.

Seth Berenzweig

They’re trying.

Joe Young

Yeah. I was really hoping this wasn't going to be our topic, but, I don't think anything changed on my drive over here today.

Declan Leonard

Yeah, we were thinking we were going to talk about employee handbooks, and then we said, “No, I think we should probably talk about the shutdown here.”

Joe Young

We should probably talk about the shutdown. So, not surprisingly, that will be our topic today, and we look forward to diving into it. For everyone who's joining us, my name is Joe Young. I'm the president of GovConPay. We are the only outsourced payroll and HR provider focused exclusively on serving the government contracting marketplace.

We are joining you live from the studios of BLC Digital Strategies, which is the media affiliate of Berenzweig Leonard LLP. And I want to thank all of our staff and team for their support and especially the leadership of our producer, Mr. Todd Castleberry. Before we get started, I also always want to recognize our sponsor from Berkshire Associates. Berkshire, our HR compliance experts with over 50 years of experience in providing compliance services and technology for organizations looking to build their ideal workforce through compliant and nondiscrimination services, workforce analytics, and pay equity. So, as always, special welcome to any Berkshire clients that are joining us today or joining us for the first time. Great to have the team back together. We missed you last month, Seth. Welcome back. But as always, I'm here, with the founding partners of Berenzweig Leonard, Mr. Declan Leonard, Mr. Seth Berenzweig.

Why don't you guys kick us off with introductions for any of our first time listeners?

Seth Berenzweig

Couldn't stay away too long. Seth Berenzweig, co-managing partner of our law firm. I help lead our corporate and transactional work and great to be back on the set podding with you guys again.

Declan Leonard

And I'm Declan Leonard. I'm also managing partner here at Berenzweig Leonard, where I head up the employment law practice here at the firm. And I do want to say, it's dark times in government contracting right now. So, I decided to go with a little bit brighter clothing. I was getting so much flak from this thing.

You know what? This is going to be my shut down blazer. Some people don't shave their beard until they win the championship like hockey. I'm not taking this off until the shutdown’s over.

Joe Young

Memorial Day will be here soon enough.

Declan Leonard

I'll pair it with white pants. I don't care what you say.

Seth Berenzweig

Yes, exactly.

Joe Young

Well, before we jump in, a couple things. First, if anybody has any questions, as always, please put them in the chat.

Declan Leonard

Compliments about my blazer.

Joe Young

Compliments about the blazer. The pocket square. We'll take anything we can get. But obviously, if there's a lot of questions out there today, please put them in, and we will do our best to address those live on the show today. Before we jump into our set agenda and some of the questions you want address, Seth, why do you just kick us off with kind of government shutdown 101. Like what are we in for? What's going on? And if you want to give a little commentary on what you think is going to happen next.

Seth Berenzweig

So, it's the usual hot mess from our friends here in Washington. They're unable to put together a workable budget that both parties and both chambers can agree on to even get to the president. Depending upon who you talk to, they'll tell you what's the reason for it. But the reality of it is that the shutdown has been in effect, starting on the first.

We're on day 16. We were talking before the show about the fact that Poly Markets has this looking like it's going to go through November. Just saying. It doesn't mean that that's what's going to happen. The traditional approach on this is that all - and this is not my phrase, it is the government's phrase - all nonessential personnel are now basically furloughed.

They're not in the office and they're just kind of on standby. And as we talked about, there are some of our government contracts customers that are still working. Some are not. Some are being told that they need to shut down by a certain day. But this is going on. And unfortunately, as we sit here today, there's no end in sight.

Declan Leonard

So, we've used this phrase a number of times in the round table: Government contractors are guinea pigs. We've talked about it in the context of DEI and all of the flowdowns immediately hit government contractors. I think we need to amend our metaphor a little bit and call them the punching bags, because, really, that's what's happening.

I mean, this year has been a very tough one, no doubt about it. Starting off with DoGE cuts, now we're in the shutdown, which, if it goes an additional month, for HR leaders out there, that's going to have a big, big impact on benefits. We all know that. We'll talk about this a little bit later on, but insurance usually goes month to month.

And right now, it started on… We're already in month one of it. And so, who's paying these medical premiums? Things of that nature. So, it's a quagmire, there's no doubt. And it's a lot for people to try to unravel and run a business.

Seth Berenzweig

And I would just… I know we need to move on to it because we have a lot of elements of this to discuss. But, unfortunately, there seems to be almost kind of a perverse incentive as to the continued infighting. The politicians are really kind of hashtagging out right now, trying to point fingers at each other. So, it's not a very productive time here in Washington.

And unfortunately, there's not even any kind of a proposal of any concreteness that's on the table to see any kind of a bridge. There's no end in sight, as we said.

Joe Young

We really have a perfect storm of both sides think they're winning the argument, and they both think they're winning the polls.

Declan Leonard

Yes, yes.

Joe Young

It's a horrible situation.

Declan Leonard

And government contractors are pawns in the middle.

Joe Young

Yeah. They both think they're winning the argument when they're really both losing the argument. But that's just a really dangerous and challenging time to be. So, with that as a little bit of a preamble, Declan, let's start with you. What should the contractors be doing? What should they be looking for from their contracting offers and other reps of the government, as far as guidance on how they should be moving forward?

Declan Leonard

The government shutdown, in some ways, the word “shutdown” is a little bit of misnomer because it's not as though lights are completely off for all government activities. And so, it's so critical to be in close touch with your government contractor - government customer, I should say - as to where you stand. And by the way, it's mostly going to be contract by contract, task order by task order.

It's not like you're a company and you're like, “We're completely shut down.” That may not be the case at all. You need to pay attention to things like stop work orders. Sometimes those are going to be full stop work orders. Sometimes they're going to be partial stop work orders. The government always retains the ability to terminate contracts for convenience also.

So T for Cs. I think stop work orders are probably more prevalent during the shutdown than a termination for convenience. Contracts that are fully funded before the shutdown, those - I say this with a little bit of an asterisk - but those should be okay. Because those are funded. So really, what we're talking about from a shutdown standpoint is we're not funding further stuff.

But if you're an incrementally funded contract - and we see that with a lot of our clients - where they don't have these full years with full option years. They are incrementally being funded on things. Those are the ones that are definitely feeling it because those are dependent on brand new appropriations. So, they're most likely being impacted by the shutdown.

And of course, as we've seen, even with DoGE activity, national security, emergency preparedness, those ones, by and large, are moving forward. And I think, Seth, you might have even mentioned earlier that a lot of our clients are active and still working. Maybe they're getting cut down on some of their contracts.

But, this is not a full shutdown for all of our clients.

Seth Berenzweig

Although, I will say that we do have a handful that have said that, to your point, funding is going to be running out shortly.

Declan Leonard

Yeah, yeah. So, it may be like the longer it goes on… It wasn't like day one on October first, lights were out. It's really just, “Okay, when does this funding…” The existence of a shutdown is bad enough. The duration of it will really dictate how much damage it does.

Seth Berenzweig

Exactly.

Joe Young

So Seth, if one of our listeners out there, they've received a stop order what steps should they be take?

Seth Berenzweig

Well, first of all, I think the key is to just make sure that you get it in writing. It's one thing to be told certain things by the contracting officer, but to get it in writing, I think is key. And, and then, as Declan mentioned a moment ago, exactly what the stop work order says, it's also very essential.

You have to receive it. You have to review it and analyze it. It may be partial, it may be complete. It may be timed upon a certain element. Once you receive your stop work order, you have to notify your subs. You have to notify your staff. It's all about communication. Communication is key. And nobody wants to be left in the dark.

And that's something that's really important. Any work done after the termination point of the stop work order is essentially going to be done at risk. So, those are the things that you have to keep in mind. And unfortunately, there's really a lot of stress and ambiguity out there right now because some people don't exactly know where they're sitting week to week.

In theory, you would think that there would be a clear delineation between essential personnel - and again, not our term. That's the government's term. But, the key is to get it in writing and then understand your path moving forward.

Declan Leonard

I would just also say real quick, on the issue of subcontractors, there already has been throughout this year, probably more so than I've seen in the past, a lot of jockeying between prime contractors and subcontractors in terms of work share issues. You better know your contracts. You better know whether or not you have the ability as, let's say, the prime, to cut back on subcontractor workshare. And you better know if you're the subcontractor, is my workshare adequately protected? And so, there's a lot of jockeying and we saw it with DoGe, and now we see it even more so when funding issues become paramount on these contracts.

Seth Berenzweig

Such a great point, because even in the best of times, workshare and taking up of seats… That gets testy even when everything is perfect. So now, it's going to get real hot. So, have that piece of your contract ready for review just in case that comes up. That's a really good point.

Joe Young

Declan, you mentioned these folks on incremental contracts obviously are not getting paid incrementally now as we're into this space. That doesn't mean they're not incurring costs still. So what's their capability to recoup any costs that they've incurred while they're going through this process? You said insurance benefits and things like that could be a part of that. What's that look like?

Declan Leonard

Yeah. So, that's an important thing. And it's very detailed. Obviously, it's not conducive to the short format that we have here. We're very fortunate here at Berenzweig Leonard to have… I head up our employment law practice. Seth does a ton of employment law in addition to transactional. But we've got a great government contracts legal team here led by Stephanie Wilson.

And that's what they've been busy doing: Advising clients on winding down and starting back up costs. Now again, starting back up costs are TBD at this point. But they've been advising companies on the very specific parameters because, yes, you can recoup costs. You're not going to get everything. You're not going to be made whole, let's put it that way. It's not like you're getting all of the time and materials revenue, but you can recoup costs. And even in a firm fixed price contract, you can recoup costs. So that's one benefit. Again, I call it a little bit of a Band-Aid. It's a way to build a business and grow a business, but at least it helps to just stop some of the damage.

Very tight timelines there. I'm not going to get too deep into them, but 30 days generally is what you're looking at when you're trying to do one of these cost capturing and documentation - as we say how many different times here on the roundups? Documentation in this instance is really, really critical because these are going to be contract by contract.

You're going to have mitigation requirements where you do the best you can to reassign employees. You can't just have people just sitting around saying, “Oh, we'll just get this money back some way, when all the dust settles.” So, that's all very important.

Joe Young

So, from your perspective, would it be advisable to our listeners out there, should they be assigning single points of contact for managing these contracts and some of these costs and things that they need to be tracking during this time?

Declan Leonard

Oh, I think so. More than ever. I mean, A: To have one point of contact between you and the government customer. It's going to be hard enough to even get to the government customer, as we'll talk about in a little bit. But yes, one particular person who is tracking all of this stuff because as I said before, if you're recouping costs, you're not recouping it on a companywide basis.

You're recouping it on a contract by contract, task order by task order basis. So, you've got to have great employment records, great accounting records. This is where HR has to be collaborating with all of the leaders throughout a company. And it can't just be in a silo. Yeah. So, I do think that that's a critical thing: to have one particular person.

Joe Young

More work for our warriors out.

Declan Leonard

Yes, yes, exactly.

Joe Young

So, obviously communication is key through all of this. What would be some of the advice as far as messaging of what that should look like when they're communicating with their employees? We're bound to have obviously a tremendous amount of questions during these uncertain times.

Seth Berenzweig

Yeah, I would say communicate early and often. And that becomes a little bit easier said than done, because sometimes on a week-to-week basis, it's hard to know exactly who you're communicating with. Let's say that one of your key points of contact is a contracting officer. Well, there was a ruling just a day or two ago from a federal court in San Francisco where the government came in and tried to get rid of 4100 employees on the West Coast.

And then a judge in San Francisco came in and said, “You can't do that.” And that's probably going to be appealed. So, there are many things that are out of our control right now, but I think communication about what's going on, what's the latest, what are the anticipations? Communicating early and often.

And trying to make sure that you have your personnel in place to minimize loss, minimize your expenses that you would need to get from the government. The other thing that I think is really important is to think about this as a ladder in terms of what the options are for how to handle a situation where the work, at least for the foreseeable short term, if not longer, is going to go away.

There are a number of options that you can do short of separation of employment. Let's just try to look at it, for example, in terms of the gradations going and trying to take them gradually up until the endpoint. You can have people stay on board and spend some time with training.

Sometimes it's hard to stay on top of training, but if you can have someone go to training, have someone go to remote work, or have someone shift into a part of work in training that is otherwise available, there may be another division or another contract that they may be able to work on. If that doesn't work, then use of PTO is something that could be a creative option.

At some point, you may have to consider a furlough. You know, it was funny. I was actually in a meeting with Declan a day or two ago, and he actually said a phrase that I was like, “That's actually a good point.” I think you said something like “Furlough is just kind of like a totally made up word.”

In other words, there's really no such thing precisely as a furlough. It's just kind of a layoff that's kind of possible. Yeah, maybe likely, but we'll see. Who knows?

Declan Leonard

Yeah yeah yeah.

Joe Young

Put you in time out.

Declan Leonard

Yeah yeah yeah yeah. We're still friends but we're not dating or something. I don't know what it is. Yeah.

Seth Berenzweig

But think about it in terms of the gradations of how to do that. There are steps that you can do, several steps that can be done, short of a removal from employment from the company.

Joe Young

Now, should listeners prioritize reassigning exempt and nonexempt employees to avoid having to furlough? Is that a strategy that you can look at as well?

Seth Berenzweig

I think I'm going to let Declan take that one. He’s more of the exempt, nonexempt guru.

Declan Leonard

Well, I think the question is really like, really boils down to, should we do everything we can to reassign employees rather than actually furloughing them? Because I just mentioned - and again, I've grappled with this and we've talked about it in other prior shutdowns - what does it mean to furlough somebody?

It's not really a legal designation. I have these debates with other employment law practitioners when we're geeking out about this stuff. And it's not really a true… it's almost like a state of being. It's like we still are tethered together. The expectation, unlike a layoff, is that you are going to come back.

And obviously it's outside the control of the company. The company wants you to continue working. So, the only reason you're having this conversation is because an outside force - in this case, Congress and the shutdown - has forced a kind of a division in the relationship. And you hope that it's just going to come back once that divide is gone.

So, yeah, if you can reassign them… Because if you put somebody on furlough, they're not making income, in theory. They're going to look for another job. And so, you do risk losing these people. In terms of exempt versus nonexempt, and we'll talk about that in a second… I feel like most of our clients listening, or at least the majority, the majority of their workforce is probably exempt.

Nonexempt which would mean that their hourly employees, probably would be more along the lines of staffing, Service Contract Act contracts, and those ones have their specific wage determinations. And a lot of those, by the way, are governed by unions, collective bargaining. Yeah. So always being wary of that.

Joe Young

So, we've identified that this term furlough is not well defined in this gray area. But if you do find yourself in this situation where you’ve got furloughed employees, from an employment law perspective, what are some of the key concerns that our listeners need to be thinking about?

Declan Leonard

Yeah, furlough. The status itself… That's why I say - I've been doing this just shy of 30 years, and I don't even really know, like, what furlough means. It creates such a headache because for the HR leaders out there. HR professionals who are dealing with this, they're sitting there saying, “Okay, we're calling it a furlough, but like, what does that mean from a daily basis? We're not paying them. Can they get unemployment?” And the short answer is generally yes. If you're not working, even if it's from a temporary standpoint, you can get unemployment. Now, that's state by state, which creates even a little bit more of a headache with a lot of our clients’ workforces spread out.

It's hard to say anymore that our headquarters is in X for a lot of companies. Our clients don't even have a headquarters located in a particular state. And so, you've got to look at all these different state unemployment laws. But generally speaking, if you're an employee who wants to work and you're unable to work because of the furlough, you can get unemployment.

Now, unemployment is not your full wages.

Seth Berenzweig

It’s not great.

Declan Leonard

No, it's not great. Other issues that come up in furloughs is let's just say we talked before that most of our clients, most of the listeners probably are employing a lot of exempt meaning, they're salaried. Do you pay them for partial weeks before the furlough starts? Or let's just say the furlough ended next Wednesday and your employees are back. Do you then pay them? And I think people differ on this concept. I don't think it's ever truly been challenged in court. I kind of take the position that, like, this is an outside and post separation. So, I think, you could make a credible argument that that is one of the exceptions where you could pay a salaried employee for a partial week, as opposed to the general rule that if you're salaried exempt, you got to be paid for the entire week.

So, but these are these are kind of unsolved, and they just are more headaches for HR folks.

Joe Young

What about PTO during that furlough period? Is that something that is still accrued?

Declan Leonard

Yeah. Well, okay. So, PTO generally - although some states mandated - but PTO generally is a voluntary employee benefit. I would take the position that, if they're not working, they are not legally entitled to continue to accrue PTO. And think about the financial… I mean, you mentioned that the betting markets are saying this may go till the end of November.

They also said the Philadelphia Eagles were going to win last week. So, you can't even really listen to them. But – sorry I had to do that.

Joe Young

I'm fading the betting markets. I think we're coming back on Tuesday after this weekend.

Seth Berenzweig

You’re short the Eagles.

Joe Young

Yeah.

Declan Leonard

But if you can't afford it, I would say that's probably one. Health insurance is another one. Do you have to continue to carry somebody? You're not paying your people. So, you're no longer, if they carry a portion of the premiums, you're not able to deduct it like you normally would.

Joe Young

I had that scenario yesterday. A client contacted us the other day like, “Hey, I've got my piece of it that I can cover. But the employee deduction, they're not being paid. I'm not getting that. I'm not really sure how long I can fund that or what are the ramifications if we get into the next month.” So, there's cost for insurance.

Seth Berenzweig

How do you handle that? Someone calls and says, “My employee is asking what he or she should do because she's not working. She can't pay it, but if she doesn't pay her half of the premium, then her family runs out of health insurance.”

Declan Leonard

Then it becomes almost a, “Does the company have the ability to fund it?” There's no legal requirement to do so because again, furlough really is kind of a laid off status. But we're still very much talking and we're still very much going to get back together when the shutdown is over with. But there's no requirement, if they're not paying their portion.

And you certainly could reach out and try to get that. But if not, the question then becomes… and that's why when we get into a whole nother month of November, you're talking about a whole nother month of health insurance. And that's just a huge cost on companies that are coming out. It hasn't been a banner year for most companies in the GovCon realm.

So, it's a very tough thing. It's really kind of company by company. The flip side of it is, let's just say this does only continue until November. You then have to go through the rigamarole of like putting them back on insurance in December. So, there's a lot of logistics.

Seth Berenzweig

Because it's a two-week leapfrog, right? Every two weeks depending upon the administration in terms of them having to…?

Declan Leonard

Yeah. In terms of them having to pay their portion of premiums. Yes. So it’s a logistical nightmare.

Joe Young

Question for you to put you on the spot if we didn't try to do it before, but say there's a scenario and you have the company and they're like, “Hey, I'm in a position. I have the funds. I'm just going to fund the full premium to my employees.” Then the employees come back. Does the employer then have the right to say, “Okay, well, now in a year, I'm going to come back, and the deductions you didn't pay for October, November, now I'm going to take those in arrears spread over the next couple of months,” or is it just goodwill? “I did that on behalf of the employees.” I'd be curious.

Declan Leonard

Yeah. Deductions. You can do deductions, but you've got to make sure you jump through the right hoops. Ideally, what you would want to do is, prospectively, have that arrangement already like agreed to. “Hey, look, we're going to pay for when this ends. When you come back, you agree that we'll do it and we'll do it in an economical way. We're not going to take it all in one. We're not going to knock your paycheck way, way down.” But yeah, no, absolutely. If you do deductions, though generally the law requires that you really get a contemporaneous agreement signed by them. The laws are very vigilant against the employer doing what they call “self-help remedies.”

They control the purse strings. And so, they can take whatever deductions they want. The law basically says, “Hey, you better have something signed from that employee that says, ‘I agree that I'm going to take that deduction.’” So it's almost like two steps. One, we have this agreement ahead of time that you're going to do this when we come back.

And two, hey you agree that I can take this deduction on this next paycheck.

Joe Young

Yeah. One other question is I know we talked a little bit about communication with employees. And I know in the furlough it's very strict. Like you're not allowed to work. You can't be doing work. You're not looking at emails. So, how do I communicate with my employees who are being told you're not allowed to open emails?

It creates a communication issue that you're telling them I want to keep you abreast of what's going on, what the options are, but you're not allowed to look at the emails, which is the way I communicate to you. You can’t be on Slack. You can't be on Teams.

Declan Leonard

It reminds me of an out of office I saw one time. Somebody said, “I'm out of office. I'm on vacation with my family. So, therefore, it may be 10 to 15 minutes before I get back to you on this email.” How many of us out there, we love what we do. Everyone's got a very much a strong mission sense. I think it's hard to keep them from looking at emails and stuff. What do you think?

Seth Berenzweig

I think that, hopefully, the HR department has their phone numbers. It's hard to believe that these things work for anything other than checking Instagram, but, yeah, you would have to try to reach out to them in some fashion.

Declan Leonard

Yeah. But the hardest thing is policing that. Because you're right. If you're an exempt employee and you do any level of work in a given workweek, the general rule is you're supposed to be paid for the full week. If you're the employer, you need to really, really step back and say, “Okay, I'm looking at the tea leaves down the road. I think this new IDIQ is going to come out. Let me reach out to my team and see what they think.” And you start brainstorming on it and everything. And this is during the shutdown. That is compensable work, I would argue. So, it's it's kind of a double-edged sword for them to be. And you want to be in close touch with your employees from a morale standpoint, just continuity. You all are a team working together, and then all of a sudden you're like, having to cut off all communication because you're worried that you might violate the Fair Labor Standards Act exempt employee thing.

Joe Young

And don't ask me why I know this, but it's when you talk about the phone, then there's laws I've stumbled across. Can you use their phone? Can you text them without their permission?

Declan Leonard

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Young

It's a personal device. It opens a whole other issue.

Declan Leonard

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Young

I guess you could call.

Declan Leonard

I think California has stuff.

Joe Young

But you start using text that you have other issues.

Seth Berenzweig

Unless they're golfing, of course.

Declan Leonard

You know.

Joe Young

Then it's tacitly approved already.

Declan Leonard

Then it's saying yes.

Joe Young

So, to wrap it up and bring us home here, Seth. We talked a little bit as far as what we were seeing in the case of California. But with regards to speaking of RIFs and what impact that could have on contractors.

Seth Berenzweig

Yeah, it's a very dynamic environment and the situation of what's going on with the RIFs, it's like waking up in the morning and not knowing which direction the wind is blowing. OPM recently clarified that, RIF related activities are exempted from furlough shutdowns, and some RIF notices have already been sent out. It's hard to know exactly from a week-to-week basis where we are.

I think communication is key. Communicating with the employees, having a clear line of communication from the government. And it's frustrating for everybody because not only do you not know the situation politically, but you don't even know what the situation is legally because someone's riffed until they're not. And then it's almost like a light switch that goes on and off.

So, you really have to just stay on top of it.

Declan Leonard

So, Seth, we started this off like kind of talking high level even almost like policy-oriented stuff. Maybe we'll end doing the same thing. And I was thinking about this because, if you notice during Covid, I think you look at, like, private equity. I mean, up until now, before Covid, government contractors, they were sometimes seen as, “Oh, small margins.

And we're chasing the private sector and we're doing all this stuff.” Covid comes into play, and a lot of the markets see government contracting as very stable, very sure, your margins are maybe not sometimes as much. But it's very stable. The work is there. You're guaranteed. You got the government - and then you get and Covid proved that.

But then you come into this year, and you got DoGE, and now you have the shutdown. So, what I have seen with our clients is that they're resilient. And that, when you need to pivot, you pivot. I think that a lot of them will start to balance out some of their government contract work.

Looking to balance that out with a lot more commercial work, too.

Seth Berenzweig

Yeah, I love that point about the VCs and the PE firms because what you just said is going to have a direct impact on valuation and liquidity, because the more that they can differentiate and lean a little bit more into the commercial, the more they're going to have better deal flow. So that's a really interesting point. Yeah.

Joe Young

Well I think everybody's ready to get to 2026 regardless.

Declan Leonard

Yes.

Joe Young

So, thank you guys. As always, thank you to our listeners for joining us. Again, timely topics, tough topics. We did talk before we came on our next podcast. Our next Round-Up is scheduled for November 20th. We talked about what some of the betting markets are saying. If we are still on a shut down on November 20th, this time may be moved to 5:00.

It may involve cocktails and not coffee mugs.

Seth Berenzweig

We may have whiskey.

Joe Young

May have brown water instead of regular water. It may be a little bit of a different show. And maybe we'll have more engagement with the audience.

Declan Leonard

One day, our topic is going to be how companies can juggle all the various bids and proposals and new work coming in. How you can hire enough people to deal with all the new work that you're getting, because I feel like it's always the opposite here.

Joe Young

We hope to have a very positive topic to talk about celebrating some positive thoughts here in November.

But until then, keep up the good fight. Best wishes to everybody. Hopefully we'll get some more clarity on some of the things we're dealing with right now. But all the best from our team here. We'll see you next month. Take care.