Things To Do In SW Florida

Associated Press

The U.S. dockworkers who went on strike early Tuesday are just the latest unionized group to back their demands for better contracts by walking off the job to illustrate their value to both the national economy, and their employers’ bottom line.

Unions representing auto workers, actors, hotel housekeepers and aircraft assembly workers all called strikes as organized labor made itself heard over the past year. Members argued they made the sacrifices their companies asked of them during the pandemic and rough economic patches, and now it’s time to catch up, particularly after several years of heightened inflation.

Between 2022 and 2023, the number of work stoppages rose 9% to 466 strikes and four lockouts, according to figures maintained by Cornell University’s IRL School. However, the number of workers involved in work stoppages, approximately 539,000, was more than double than the previous year, according to the school’s research.

A database maintained by Cornell and the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recorded 250 strikes and other labor actions in 2024 as of Monday. read more

By TOM KRISHER, WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS and TASSANEE VEJPONGSA

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The 45,000 dockworkers who went on strike Tuesday for the first time in decades at 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas may wield the upper hand in their standoff with port operators over wages and the use of automation.

Organized labor enjoys rising public support and has had a string of recent victories in other industries, in addition to the backing of the pro-union administration of President Joe Biden. The dockworkers’ negotiating stand is likely further strengthened by the nation’s supply chain of goods being under pressure in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which has coincided with the peak shipping season for holiday goods.

The union is also pointing to shipping companies’ record profits, which have come in part because of shortages resulting from the pandemic, and to a more generous contract that West Coast dockworkers achieved last year. The longshoremen’s workloads also have increased, and the effects of inflation have eroded their pay in recent years. read more

A Canadian homebuilder paid a staggering $165 million Friday for 2,300 acres of undeveloped land in Lake County’s Wellness Way area, breaking the county’s previous sale record set just three months ago.

GT USA, the American division of GT Homes, bought the swath of land stretching from U.S. 27 to the Orange County line just minutes from Disney World, GrowthSpotter reported. It includes the Arnold Groves & Ranch at 1,769 acres and the adjacent Roper property at 552 acres, which the company plans to combine into a single master-planned community called Panther Run.

The sale nearly doubles the $90 million price Pulte paid to GT USA in July for the 518-acre Schofield property just up the road. It underscores the tremendous demand for housing in fast-growing Central Florida, as the lure of jobs and relative scarcity of land in Orange County have pushed homebuyers and homebuilders to focus increasingly on surrounding counties.

Doug Bruk, Chief Operating Officer of GT USA, said the company was first drawn to the Lake County area because “Wellness Way is a great location to either raise a family or retire.” read more

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it had grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket pending an investigation into why the rocket’s second stage missed its deorbit landing target zone after this weekend’s Crew-9 launch from Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX announced it was halting launches in a social media post late Saturday, but the FAA did not confirm whether or not it had grounded the rocket until late Monday.

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX NASA Crew-9 mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on September 28,” the emailed statement reads. “The incident involved the Falcon 9 second stage landing outside of the designated hazard area. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.”

This is the third time this year the FAA has grounded the Falcon 9, and the second time because of an issue with the rocket’s second stage.

SpaceX said in its social media post the second stage “was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn.  As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.” read more

NEW YORK (AP) — Some Verizon customers across the U.S. were hit by a service outage Monday.

The issue appeared to knock out cellphone service for tens of thousands of Verizon users. Data from outage tracker DownDetector shows that reports topped 100,000 shortly after 11 a.m. ET — and while that number dropped significantly, nearly 48,000 were still facing issues closer to 4 p.m. ET.

Frustrated users online shared that they didn’t have service in many parts of the country — including the Southeastern U.S., where residents are still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. But the outage wasn’t isolated to one region. DownDetector’s map also showed many reports coming from the West Coast, Midwest and Northeast.

In an update posted on social media platform X, New York-based Verizon wrote that it was “aware of an issue impacting service for some customers.” The company added that it had engineers looking into the problem and was “working quickly to identify and solve the issue.” read more