It’s been a long week. Here’s a short recap of what’s been making news lately in Florida.
South Florida longshoremen go on strike, then suspend it
Longshoremen at PortMiami and Port Everglades joined tens of thousands of fellow dockworkers along the East and Gulf coasts in a strike that, if unresolved, could have disrupted supply chains that keep South Florida stocked with groceries, medical equipment, and more.
The longshoremens’ demands included wage increases to keep pace with inflation, and stronger job security as the threat of automation looms. Like most industries, U.S. ports profited immensely from the COVID pandemic, though that wealth hasn’t seemed to “trickle down” to the dockworkers actually providing the labor.
Fortunately, the strike came to a close yesterday when a deal was struck for dock workers to remain on the job through Jan. 15. For now, port employers have agreed to a 62% pay increase, though have refrained from making any guarantees about job security against automation. At least the can has been kicked down the road past the holiday season.
This again?
The news of the strike ending didn’t come soon enough to stop the absolute worst people from once again stockpiling toilet paper. Reports from across Florida and the country are being made about toilet paper stock at big-box stores being completely emptied, mirroring the early COVID days. Ironically, toilet paper is one of the few things that wouldn’t be affected had the strike continued. But why let logic ruin a perfectly good panic?
A bold ask
Vanderbilt University is asking Palm Beach County to donate seven acres of land, worth more almost $60 million, for the school to build a campus on. In keeping with West Palm Beach’s emerging reputation as the “Wall Street of the South,” Vanderbilt wants to capitalize on this momentum by building a business school in the area. It’s a pretty tone-deaf ask of a county where people are being priced out of their homes. Surely the residents of Palm Beach County, where a growing number of people can’t even afford rent and basic necessities, will be greatly comforted by an out-of-state school setting up shop and charging more than $100,000 in tuition.
DeSantis’ New College dream come true
New College, once a small, fairly unknown liberal arts college in Sarasota, hit the spotlight last year when it became the testing grounds for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ takeover (dismantling) of higher education. Now, more than a year later, the university is welcoming Steve Sailer, a right-wing blogger who has been labeled a white supremacist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In other words, things couldn’t be going better at New College as far as the Florida GOP is concerned, because this crusade was never about removing ideologies from college campuses—it was about removing the “wrong” ideologies.
