Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode, created by SalterMitchell PR, our executive producer, Heidi Otway, the president of SalterMitchell PR, talks to Charles Caulkins, a labor and employment lawyer and past chair of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Heidi Otway: Charley, thank you so much for being a guest on this Fluent in Floridian podcast. We are so thrilled to have you today.

Charley Caulkins: Well, thank you. I’m happy to be here too. We’re in a fantastic state. The weather right now is unbelievable, in South Florida, at least.

Heidi Otway: Oh, it’s beautiful, sunny, gorgeous here. Just a little tad cold, but that’s typical of Tallahassee.

Charley Caulkins: That’s when we get to pull our sweaters out.

Heidi Otway: Exactly. Well, congratulations on being named one of Florida Trend’s most influential leaders in our sunshine state. Let’s talk about the path that led you to your current position, starting with your childhood. You’re not a native Floridian. Tell us about where you were born.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah, I was actually born in Kansas. I don’t know how many people you’ve met who were born in Kansas, but I haven’t met very many. It’s a pretty sparse state.

Charley Caulkins: My family moved when I was pretty young, and ended up growing up in central Illinois. We had a family of nine kids and a good environment.

Charley Caulkins: Illinois, downstate at least, is a conservative area, a lot of people work hard, a lot of farmers. The place I grew up is called Decatur, Illinois. It’s the soybean capital of the world.

Heidi Otway: Interesting.

Charley Caulkins: It was a middle class family. I had a good upbringing and went to college and law school, and then started my career practicing law in Greenville, South Carolina. Labor employment law is what I started doing. That’s what I’m still doing today.

Heidi Otway: Okay. You said you grew up in a family of nine kids. Where did you fall within the nine?

Charley Caulkins: I was number two.

Heidi Otway: Number two.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah.

Heidi Otway: Oh, great. Your family, where did they work? I mean, you became a lawyer. Did your childhood influence you to become a lawyer?

Charley Caulkins: I don’t know. No, I didn’t have any lawyers in the family, in the immediate family, at least. So, I don’t know.

Charley Caulkins: I think in college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I went to, and actually drove and picked him up, F. Lee Bailey, who was a very prominent criminal defense lawyer at that time.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. He’s known for the O.J. Trial, the O.J. Simpson trial.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. I think, being around him for a few hours and listening to him, sort of gave me the idea of, wow, that’s a fascinating career to look Into. That’s what I ended up doing, obviously.

Charley Caulkins: Criminal law sounded pretty interesting at that time, but when I got into law school, I developed an interest in labor employment law, from a great labor employment law professor. That’s what I’m doing now.

Heidi Otway: Wonderful. So what brought you to the sunshine state?

Charley Caulkins: I was in South Carolina, which is also a very good state and was recruited by my law firm, Fisher Phillips, to come down to Fort Lauderdale. They had a very small office in South Florida, in Fort Lauderdale. They needed somebody to head it up and get it going and it sounded like a great idea to me. So, down here I came.

Heidi Otway: Okay. So was it just you? What was your household like at that time, when you moved to Florida

Charley Caulkins: I was married and came down here. I have three kids that have been born in Florida. And now, as you mentioned, I have a grandson that was born in January.

Heidi Otway: Oh, congratulations.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah.

Heidi Otway: How’s it been having a grandbaby?

Charley Caulkins: It’s fantastic. Babysit with him. Being around him is really unbelievable, to watch a youngster, a baby start developing. It’s just phenomenal to witness that and see. They’re brand new to the universe.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: How they develop, from their eyes hardly ever being open, to looking around and not yet being able to talk or walk yet. But just to watch that is, just to me, an incredible experience to see. I had three kids and kind of went through it with them, but just to see it now again, is really unbelievable.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about your current role. You’re in your second year as chairman of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. That’s one of the most powerful organizations in the state of Florida, when it comes to shaping our business environment.

Heidi Otway: You were chairman at the height of the COVID pandemic, when it basically shut down our state and impacted our businesses in so many ways. Tell us about that experience, having to make those decisions to help guide Florida businesses through that time period.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. I just finished my second year, so I’m now the past chair.

Heidi Otway: Okay.

Charley Caulkins: Just completed it. The chamber, as you mentioned, is a phenomenal group. I’ve been involved with it for many years. My law firm has as well.

Charley Caulkins: We believe in the mission of a chamber, which is to create a great business environment for Florida, for businesses to operate in Florida, to be successful in Florida. That’s the mission of the chamber.

Charley Caulkins: In the last several years, we have come up with some very aggressive goals for 2030. We are a goal-setting organization. The board set some very aggressive goals for the next six years, starting two years ago.

Charley Caulkins: So, we’re two years into it. Like everywhere, everybody, businesses, government, when the pandemic hit it, it really set everybody to pause and try to figure out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to survive.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: At the chamber, with unbelievably fantastic staff, we did that. We decided, with the board of directors as well, we got to stay on course.

Charley Caulkins: We did do some reevaluations of what we were doing. We did some restructuring, to make sure that we were going to stay on point. We continued pushing hard on our goals.

Charley Caulkins: I think I have to give credit to the staff at the Florida Chamber for this. It is tough for a nonprofit organization, like the chamber. You don’t know if you’re going to lose members, how you’re going to even make it.

Charley Caulkins: A lot of businesses were the same thing, law firms, just not understanding because nobody really knew what was going to… how this was all going to shake out.

Charley Caulkins: But the good news for the Florida Chamber is, we’re stronger than we have been. Our membership went up last year and it, again, went up this year.

Charley Caulkins: So, we’re actually fortunate to be where we are, at the Florida Chamber. I felt very blessed to have the support of the board members at the Florida Chamber.

Charley Caulkins: Also, around the state, I had an opportunity to work with different leaders. Our legislature is very responsible and responsive.

Charley Caulkins: I think we hit it out of the park, really, at the chamber over the last two years, considering the conditions of the economy and how much was shut down, then gradually reopened.

Charley Caulkins: So, we’re getting back on track, as the state of Florida, in a very good way. I think the Florida Chamber has had a big role in doing that, working collaboratively with legislators and other leaders throughout the state.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I am the past chair of the Tallahassee chamber and a current board member of the chamber. You all kind of set the tone for a lot of the local chambers, to help us navigate through this pandemic. So, I want to thank you for that, your leadership during that time, because all of the Tallahassee chamber is doing well, and a lot of other chambers are as well. So, thank you.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. There’s a whole group. The Florida Chamber obviously has a lot of cooperation and collaboration with chambers throughout the state of Florida.

Charley Caulkins: We don’t all agree on everything, all the time, but pretty much understanding what the mission of a chamber is, it keeps us all on track.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. What makes you most excited about Florida’s business environment, as we look ahead for the next six years and to 2030?

Charley Caulkins: Well, I think we have a really engaged group of business leaders. Can we do a lot more? Yes. But the initiatives that we have at the Florida Chamber, are setting the stage for getting Florida… keeping Florida on track, really, not getting, keeping it on track. We’re going to be better than what we were pre-COVID, soon.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: There’s a lot of things going on. One of the things that I’m most proud of, is a program, it really started pre-COVID and it’s a, from poverty to prosperity program.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: Having business people get involved directly, to make a difference. This really came to a lot of attention and fruition after the George Floyd incident and how it affected America.

Charley Caulkins: The good news is, the Florida Chamber, we were already sort of on mission. So, there were businesses that were asking, “What can we do to improve the situation in the United States of America?”

Charley Caulkins: In Florida, we have a solution for business people, how they can get involved, from reading, getting reading scores. One of our goals that I’m very interested in, particularly because one of my daughters is a third grade teacher, is to get all third graders in Florida reading at a hundred percent third grade level by 2030.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Yeah. So if a business is listening, what can you do to get involved in that?

Charley Caulkins: Right. That’s not easy, but that’s a thing you can do. Rather than just write a check to somebody and not knowing what’s going to go on with that money, is to get your workforce involved in something that will truly make a difference.

Charley Caulkins: The studies show that if third graders are not reading at third grade level… By the way, I think it’s around 50% in Florida. We have a map on our website, where you can see each school, actually.

Charley Caulkins: Studies show, by sociologists, that if third graders are not reading at a third grade level when they get out of third grade, they are most likely going to be doomed to poverty, to going to prison, on welfare the rest of their life.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty bleak.

Charley Caulkins: That’s just one thing of many, that can be done. That one particularly, has interested me because as I said, one of my daughters is a third grade teacher, in a low income area.

Charley Caulkins: To listen to her over the last few years, about the challenges as a teacher, to get these youngsters to where they need to be, we need as a business community, to get involved for all kinds of reasons.

Charley Caulkins: That’s one that I’m particularly proud of, that we really pushed on during the COVID environment, to spread it out throughout the state. It’s unbelievable to hear some of the great things that are going on by business people, throughout the state of Florida.

Heidi Otway: Can you give me some examples of what businesses are doing, what you’ve seen?

Charley Caulkins: Well, up in West Palm beach, Rybovich, Wayne Huizenga’s company up there has adopted a whole community outside where their yard is, and spending time and money in that community to address poverty, to address generations of people that have been hooked on welfare.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: As one example. Others, we have a great community college, Broward College led by Greg Haile down here and things that he’s doing. Not just him, but the college is doing, with others in our community, to go into zip codes and explain and educate people in these zip code areas, you can get education. We have it for free or a very small amount of money. We have technical skills that you can learn and get a better job. That’s another example of collaboration in the community.

Charley Caulkins: In Broward, we’ve got a lot of business leaders working with the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance that are doing a great job of leading in Broward County, the business people, to actually get involved and make a difference. See if we can wipe out poverty, or at least cut it down significantly.

Heidi Otway: I love that. I think that’s a wonderful initiative. I know that we’ve been doing it here at our firm.

Heidi Otway: We have adopted a kindergarten class. Our staff started doing reading, virtually with the kindergartners. Which we know is a way to help improve reading skills, is to actually sit down with a kid and read with a book.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. My girlfriend, Kaki Kirby, is involved here, through the United Way. ReadingPals is what they call it.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, the ReadingPals program. Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. She’s got a second grader that, she’s just so enthused about it, once a week and she’s doing it live. Here, at least, they’re going to the schools and sitting down for an hour.

Charley Caulkins: She’s got a second grader that is making fantastic progress, and so it can make a difference, just little increments at a time.

Charley Caulkins: In fact, that’s what I tell people, if they want to get involved. If each one of us, during our active life, can make little, tiny, incremental positive changes, add all that together, and it really will mean something.

Heidi Otway: Exactly. Exactly. Charley, let’s talk about your current role. I saw that you’re listed as one of the most influential labor attorneys, actually in the country.

Heidi Otway: There’s been a lot of talk about labor practices, when it comes to our current situation of this pandemic. I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity to ask you, just for some insights on, in your role as a labor attorney, what are the things you’re hearing and seeing when it comes to businesses and the pandemic?

Charley Caulkins: Well, I’ll first say, one of the reasons I really love what I do is having the opportunity to work with all kinds of businesses throughout the country, from agriculture to manufacturing, to hotels and service industry.

Charley Caulkins: So, I’ve always been really blessed to have that opportunity, to keep learning from very smart people.

Charley Caulkins: The laws get pretty complex for employers today, particularly. The current federal administration, the Biden administration, is really putting some new rules and processes in place.

Charley Caulkins: So one of the things that I enjoy doing is what we call preventative, talking with and counseling with business leaders, on how they can operate their businesses in a profitable way and stay in compliance with the law.

Heidi Otway: Right. Right.

Charley Caulkins: Some of the things that we’re seeing, the big one, obviously is the vaccine and all of that. That’s kept our law firm pretty busy.

Charley Caulkins: We have a website that has all kinds of free stuff, even on it, because we’ve just been inundated with questions and people trying to understand, businesses trying to understand and comply with the different laws.

Charley Caulkins: As you probably know, the Florida legislature finished a special session and passed some laws that the governor was very much in favor of.

Charley Caulkins: The Florida Chamber, we were very active, in working to make sure that those laws could be understood and not too much impede private employers.

Heidi Otway: Right.

Charley Caulkins: We get a lot of questions about, “What can we do? What should we do?” The one thing that I’ve learned from the whole COVID is, it’s an evolving situation.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: Every day almost, there’s something new.

Charley Caulkins: And I wish our scientist advisors would remind the public that when they come up with something, hey, we can’t say it’s going to be this tomorrow. There’s a lot of uncertainty, as this thing continues to evolve and develop.

Charley Caulkins: That’s what we’ve been counseling with our clients too, be on the ready, here. Be ready to move and change things because of the evolution, the uncertainties about the future.

Charley Caulkins: All businesses want to make a profit. They don’t want to do anything wrong, but they also want to keep their eye on making a profit. How they can do that, can be very challenging, particularly in the COVID, with… Take the hotel industry, where they’ve been shut down, open and getting staff, being healthy, and having an environment that people want to come stay in their hotels. Huge challenge.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. It’s huge for Florida because that’s one of our biggest drivers, is our tourism industry.

Charley Caulkins: It is. It is. It’s also interesting to me, in the last couple years, traveling around a little bit, depending what time it… where it all fell.

Charley Caulkins: But in Florida itself, there’s differences, about not just attitudes, but the laws, even.

Charley Caulkins: Broward County, we were quite shut down by the government, local government versus, I was up in Ocala. It was a completely different environment there.

Heidi Otway: Right. Right.

Charley Caulkins: It’s fascinating. Our state is so diverse and so different, in different ways. How that got addressed throughout the state and by the governor, it’s fascinating.

Charley Caulkins: It’s going to be really good history book stuff, when people start writing about all this, as we continue to move through and hopefully eliminate the serious risk of COVID.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. We don’t know when that’s going to happen, but until now, we just have to kind of navigate and roll with it.

Charley Caulkins: That’s right. Those are good words.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, roll with it. In the last couple of months, we’ve seen an influx of new businesses, actually moving into the state of Florida.

Heidi Otway: In your role with the chamber and also as a labor attorney, let’s talk about, where do you see some opportunities for growth? Let’s let our listeners know what you see as what’s fueling these companies moving into the state.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. I think President Reagan had the shining city on a hill, that he used to say. I think Florida is one of those, today. There’s some other states as well, but we’re standing out, as a state that people should and are taking notice of.

Charley Caulkins: It’s like I said earlier, we’re such a diverse state, from the Keys, all the way up to the panhandle and the different things that we got on the coast and the water. I’ve learned, being involved with the chamber, how diverse this state really is. It’s remarkable.

Charley Caulkins: I think this is what, in some sense, attracts businesses to look at Florida, whether they’re in the high tech, and there’s a lot of stuff going on between Miami and Palm Beach County and on up.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. They’ve kind of become like a Silicon Valley.

Charley Caulkins: Right. Southeastern University has this brand new innovation center. It’s fascinating and fantastic, versus some other thing. Take the Space Coast, what is going on there and the launches and the development and businesses that are blooming there.

Charley Caulkins: If that’s something you’re involved with, that’s where I would be looking at, on the Space Coast.

Charley Caulkins: It’s repeated throughout the state of Florida, different opportunities. Our economy’s gotten so much more diverse. We’re just not a tourist attraction and that’s it, anymore.

Heidi Otway: No, not anymore. You’re right.

Charley Caulkins: So, it’s almost an easy sell. I would also say that, we’ve got a very good government attitude in Florida, state and mostly many local areas. We’re very positive, working with businesses.

Charley Caulkins: In the last 20 years… and this really starts with Jeb Bush, Governor Bush, if you look at the economic, fiscal responsibility that our leadership, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or of no party, it’s one of the unsung heroes, so to speak, of Florida.

Charley Caulkins: The fiscal responsibility that the leadership, in the last 20 years in our state, have done, has put us in a good shape to be able to survive these shocks, the COVID and the real estate.

Charley Caulkins: If you just think about the last 20 years and where we are financially, we’ve had very prudent leadership on the fiscal side of Florida. That sells Florida to businesses, when you sit down and talk to them about why this is a state you ought to be doing business in.

Charley Caulkins: It’s more than just, we have the third largest state in the country. There’s a big population, but we also have an environment that I think businesses take notice of and understand that.

Charley Caulkins: So, you don’t have to agree with, I’ll call it the Republican leadership, we’ve had in the state. But you do have to admit and agree, that the fiscal responsibility of the state and that’s both Ds and Rs in Tallahassee, has actually turned out to put us in very good shape, that we are today.

Charley Caulkins: So, I would be telling businesses, “Come look. Take a look at Florida. Take some time. You shouldn’t just rush around. Really, there’s so much diversity. Go to the chambers. Go to the state chamber.”

Charley Caulkins: A lot of the state areas have these… Broward, we have the Fort Lauderdale Alliance. So, there’s all kinds of opportunities for businesses to figure out where in Florida would be the right place for them.

Charley Caulkins: I know our governor is very interested in talking with business leaders about what we can do in Florida to get them here. So, it’s a really good time to be in Florida.

Charley Caulkins: We’re privileged to be in Florida. We want to continue to have responsible growth in Florida. And I think we’re going to see that, with what I see on the horizon.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I totally agree. I just did a trip and I went up and down the state. All I saw was continued growth on our highways and buildings and housing. It’s just, it’s like a boom town here.

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. It’s got challenges. You try to get transportation right. It’s not all perfect, but I know I see in Broward County, for sure, collaboration of everybody.

Charley Caulkins: I mean, we have differences and disagreements, but there’s some big picture stuff, that I think is a lot of collaboration, going on throughout the state of Florida. Certainly, in Broward County, there is, among the businesses and the government and citizen activists. It’s a good time to be in Florida.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. We talked about your childhood. We talked about your role as an attorney. We talked about your role with the chamber. So, you got a lot going on.

Heidi Otway: What do you do in your downtime? What are your hobbies? What do you do in your downtime?

Charley Caulkins: Yeah, it’s a good question. If you know many lawyers, most of us don’t have much hobbies. My girlfriend says, I’m the only lawyer she met, that doesn’t play golf.

Heidi Otway: You don’t play golf?

Charley Caulkins: Yeah, I don’t play golf. No, I really like to read a lot. Now, with my grandson, trying to make sure I spend some time, carve out some time for him. And then traveling is a fantastic thing, that hopefully is coming back.

Charley Caulkins: I know it will come back, but just getting out and seeing how other people live and work and play, I find it fascinating to do that.

Heidi Otway: Well, thank you so much for being a guest. We want to wrap up our wonderful conversation here, by asking you some questions that we ask of all of our guests on this Fluent in Floridian podcast.

Heidi Otway: The first question is, what Florida person, place or thing deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Charley Caulkins: I think what I mentioned, about the fiscal prudence of our leaders, that’s one that I wish the media would cover more, to explain and help educate our citizens about why we need to be prudent, keep our taxes down and how that’s being done.

Heidi Otway: Okay. What is your favorite Florida place to visit?

Charley Caulkins: I love The Breakers. Give them a free advertisement here. It’s less than an hour from Fort Lauderdale. I go up there maybe three or four times a year, different reasons. But it’s a fabulous resort that is privately owned by a family.

Charley Caulkins: The upkeep of it and the staff and how they treat you, is just unbelievable. So, that’s probably my favorite place in Florida to go.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, it is beautiful. Who is a Florida leader from the past or present, who inspires you?

Charley Caulkins: Wayne Huizenga was an unbelievable person. My office is in the building where his office was when he was active. He’s passed away.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Charley Caulkins: Being around him and watching him and the generosity he had, as well, but his spirit and his lack of big ego, just how he conducted himself. He was not a person that wanted to give speeches or didn’t want accolades. He deserved a lot and got some, deserved a lot of accolades. But just being around and watching him, how he was a fantastic leader and a contributor, and very interested in maintaining the free enterprise system.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I grew up in Miami. So, I remember when he was the owner of the Miami Dolphins then.

Charley Caulkins: Right.

Heidi Otway: That’s what I remember most about him. Now, I’m assuming that you are a sports fan here. You say you don’t play golf, but do you have a favorite sports team in Florida?

Charley Caulkins: Yeah. Yeah. One of my daughters went to the U.

Heidi Otway: University of Miami.

Charley Caulkins: So, I’d say the ‘Canes football.

Heidi Otway: Okay.

Charley Caulkins: Hopefully they’ll get it back together, a little better than they have, but that’d be the team.

Heidi Otway: All right, the U. Well, Charley, thank you so much for being this guest on our Fluent in Floridian podcast. We are so thrilled to have you. Thank you so much.

Charley Caulkins: Okay. Thank you very much.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at smprflorida.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.