Orlando made pretty big headlines in 2023, but we suspect some important stories fell just under the radar.

While DeSantis’ legal feud with Disney World raged on, the parks’ costuming workers fought for better pay. While Floridians bought water and supplies for Hurricane Idalia, prison labor was used to prepare for the storm. While Florida’s abortion ban was debated, an Orlando doctor threw a wrench in local advocates’ work.

Here are some of the most overlooked Orlando news stories of 2023.

Florida’s history of using unpaid incarcerated people to prepare communities for hurricanes — by filling and distributing sandbags, for instance — isn’t previously unreported. But it is underreported. Whether you think it’s a good deed or not, incarcerated people across the state don’t have a choice about performing work, often unpaid or earning less than $1 an hour, while jailed or imprisoned. Prisons in Florida wouldn’t be able to function without their unpaid laborers. But it’s during hurricane season when this unpaid labor is perhaps most visible, as sheriffs’ offices proudly post about prisoners doing this work on social media. Read full article
Starbucks workers at more than 350 locations in 43 states have voted to join the labor union Starbucks Workers United since December 2021, drawing national attention and inspiring service workers for other companies to organize their workplaces, too. Florida is home to six unionized locations, including a location in Oviedo, near UCF. Unfortunately, Starbucks — a company with a long history of union opposition — has refused to bargain in good faith with the union, and workers are still fighting for an initial union contract. Read full article
Florida lawmakers passed a bill during the 2023 legislative session to legalize fentanyl test strips — strips of paper that are capable of detecting whether a drug contains fentanyl, a driving force behind thousands of overdose deaths in the state each year. But, unlike similar proposals in some other states, the law only legalized testing equipment for fentanyl and didn’t include other dangerous drugs that have entered the illicit drug market, like xylazine, which can cause serious side effects including life-threatening sedation and severe skin wounds that sometimes lead to amputation. Read full article
Nearly 50,000 employees of General Motors, Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) and Ford this fall walked out on strike, following the expiration of their union contract. While much of the attention was based on the thousands of workers that walked out on strike in the Midwest, there were also about 80 workers at a Stellantis auto parts center in Orlando that walked off the job in solidarity with their co-workers. Orlando Weekly visited the picket line multiple times over the course of the five weeks that they were out on strike to learn more about their histories with the company, and what the stakes were for them and their families in this fight. Read full article
As the Disney World unions gathered together to bargain for a new contract for the theme parks’ 43,000 union workers this year, a small group of those workers who do costuming work told Orlando Weekly about something that’s chronically fallen under the radar: a gender wage gap between costuming workers (most, but not all, of whom are women) and stage tech workers (who are mostly men). Read full article
Orange County board of county commissioners passed a new local law that forbids landlords and realtors from discriminating against tenants with housing vouchers — e.g. Section 8. That is, you can’t explicitly refuse someone just because they have a voucher. A review of rental listing sites by Orlando Weekly, however, found that many property management companies continue to post discriminatory listings anyway. Read full article
The Labor Pros, headquartered in downtown Orlando, is one of the most active “union avoidance” consulting firms in the country. It’s also one of the top violators of a federal law that requires “union avoidance” consultants to file financial disclosure reports with the U.S. Department of Labor. Read full article
A local chain of crisis pregnancy centers, known as Choices Women’s Clinic, is opening up a new location in Kissimmee to offer “choices” to pregnant people — but abortion isn’t one of them. Although the nonprofit’s main website appears to offer information about abortion, in reality, it’s a religious-based organization that, according to its separate donors website, wants to “change abortion in Orlando until there are zero.” Read full article
Florida voters in 2020 overwhelmingly voted in favor of raising Florida’s minimum wage gradually from $8.46 to $15 by October 2026. The initiative got the support of nearly 61% of voters — more votes than either former president Donald Trump (who won the popular vote in Florida in 2020) or President Joe Biden. Currently, the minimum wage is $12 an hour. But, because of a lack of enforcement in the state, labor advocates warn the state needs to do more to actually make sure bosses are following the law. Read full article
Orlando Weekly exclusively reported on a local internal medicine doctor who owns a private practice next door to the Center of Orlando for Women abortion clinic. For years, Dr. Donald Collins, MD, has allowed anti-abortion protesters (one calls himself a “sidewalk counselor”) to stand on his property, ensuring protesters have an easier time harassing patients. (We’ve been there and seen it.) Read full article
Dining service workers at Rollins College, officially employed by contractor Sodexo, first began organizing with Unite Here Local 362 in August 2022. But they did so quietly, knowing employers can get into full-on aggressive “union buster” mode once workers formally announce their intent to unionize. And that’s exactly what happened. Read full article
Credit: Photo by Monivette Cordeiro

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General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.