Orlando made it big in the news cycle this year, but as always, we suspect a few big headlines fell just under the radar.

While Florida’s abortion rights fight raged on, an anti-abortion center opened in Kissimmee. While the city announced ambitious new cosmetic plans for downtown, homeless people were targeted with a local law banning public sleeping. While Disney geared up for upgraded rides, costumed park employees passed out from the Florida heat.

Here are some of Orlando’s most important news stories that you might have overlooked in 2024. 

As Central Florida receives warnings for dangerously high temperatures outdoors, local workers at Disney World say their employer isn’t taking their health and safety seriously, just days after two live performers passed out on the job. Teamsters Local 385 President Walt Howard told Orlando Weekly that Disney is only compliant to union safety requirements when pushed, adding that it “has become unresponsive to characters’ safety.” Read full article.
Catholic Charities of Central Florida, a not-for-profit affiliated with the national Catholic Charities organization, operated anti-abortion pregnancy centers in Florida and is a ministry of the Diocese of Orlando, a church that contributed $50,000 to a multimillion-dollar campaign that was launched to oppose Florida’s abortion rights initiative on the 2024 ballot. Last year, as part of an ongoing effort to address the city’s unaffordable housing problem, Orlando City Council gifted the local charity that openly opposes abortion access with more than $200,000 in federal grant money to renovate single-family homes into affordable housing units for low-income people. The projects were supposed to be completed by Sept. 30, 2024, but the charity asked for an extension this month due to delays. City Council approved an extension through Sept. 30, 2025, not without comment or controversy. Read full article.
As of Nov. 1, the U.S. Department of Labor is holding onto roughly $4.7 million in back-wages for 7,484 workers in Florida who were either underpaid or unpaid in violation of federal wage and hour laws over the last three to five years. This includes 428 workers in Orange County alone who are owed nearly $400,000 in unpaid wages altogether. According to Les Rodriguez, assistant division director of the federal Wage and Hour Division in Central Florida, workers in the restaurant, service, construction, and agricultural industries in Florida are disproportionately represented. Read full article.
The Orange County Board of County Commissioners this fall had an uncomfortable discussion about how to react to a new state law that bans sleeping on public property. Many municipalities in Florida, including Orlando, already had local bans on public encampments in place that preceded the statewide ban — punishable through fines, jail time, or both. Orange County, however, does not. County leaders said they hoped new initiatives county staff have come up with — such as increasing shelter capacity, landlord incentives, and investing in “tiny homes” — will help prevent the county from being forced to arrest or jail people whose only “crime” is that they don’t have a place to sleep. Read full article.
The National Mediation Board, a federal agency overseeing labor relations in the airline and rail industries, rejected an attempt by Brightline to delay a union election for their onboard service attendants in Florida, who recently announced their intent to unionize with the Transport Workers Union. The union filed a petition for an election with the National Mediation Board in August, accompanied by signed cards of support from more than 50 percent of the roughly 100 Brightline employees who would be eligible to join in a historic organizing effort. But Brightline filed an objection to the union’s application, claiming it was not a “rail carrier” and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the National Mediation Board, the administrator of the Railway Labor Act. Read full article.
A labor union that represents thousands of hotel and food service workers at Disney World in Orlando filed a complaint against a Disney Springs contractor, alleging the Patina Restaurant Group illegally fired a young cashier. She says she was officially fired after she walked into work wearing an earbud. She also had previously spoken up spoken up about alleged sexual harassment by a supervisor at Pizza Ponte. Read full article.
Less than one month after a ballot measure to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban narrowly failed to get the support it needed to pass, Planned Parenthood has decided to relaunch a program at their East Orlando clinic that offers an increasingly in-demand form of permanent birth control: vasectomies. Planned Parenthood, a key partner in the Amendment 4 campaign, will team up with VasWeb, a vasectomy provider based in Tampa, to provide safe no-needle, no-scalpel vasectomy procedures at Planned Parenthood’s East Orlando clinic, located off University Boulevard near the University of Central Florida. The service will only be available on select “vasectomy days,” since the provider isn’t someone they’re staffing in-house. Read full article.
Earlier this year, Dyer publicly came out in support of developer Steve Leary, a Republican and former Winter Park mayor who was vying for the open District 5 seat on the Orange County Commission. Dyer has publicly endorsed Leary — whom he has described as a “thoughtful” and an “effective leader” — and appears in Leary’s campaign materials. He’s also donated several thousands of dollars to Leary’s political action committee. Outside of the very public eye, however, campaign finance records indicated Dyer also appeared to be working with Republicans to boot from office incumbent Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson, who is being challenged by anti-abortion Republican Austin Arthur from the right. Read full article.
A new audit performed by the Orange County Comptroller’s Office revealed that about one-third of the impact fee assessments auditors examined were calculated incorrectly — with the majority of such cases involving overpayments, meaning the county charged developers too much. Out of a sample of 32 cases, for instance, 11 were identified by auditors as overpayments, while another three involved underpayments. The largest overpayment identified was $405,543 — a charge that has since been refunded to the payer (after auditors pointed the problem out to county management). Read full article.
After a contentious round of union contract negotiations, registered nurses at two HCA hospitals in Central Florida — HCA Lake Monroe in Sanford and HCA Osceola Hospital in Kissimmee — have voted to approve new contracts negotiated between their union and their multibillion-dollar employer, HCA Healthcare. According to the union, National Nurses United, the new three-year collective bargaining agreements deliver an average 15 percent wage increase for registered nurses — the largest guaranteed wage increase ever secured for nurses at both facilities, over the life of the contract — plus improvements to nurses’ “floating” policy and the option of adding personal pronouns and preferred names to name badges. Read full article.
The Orange County Classroom Teachers Association — representing nearly 14,000 staff — fought the district to enshrine pumping rights at work in the union’s next contract. The district initially shot down the union’s proposal, but the eight-member Orange County School Board overrode the district’s position and largely approved the union’s requested contract language. The association reached an impasse with the school district in mid-September, forcing the two parties to appeal to the school board for resolution. Despite reaching some agreements, the two parties were unable to agree on several issues. Teachers said the district wasn’t complying, and they want a legally binding contract. Read full article.
Ahead of Hurricane Milton, Orlando Weekly questioned the city’s protocol for Lake Eola’s swans. Apparently, it’s the swans’ call. And they continue to fare quite well. Read full article.
Just west of downtown Orlando on Westmoreland Street, the Orange County Medical Clinic has launched a new medication-assisted treatment program in partnership with a nonprofit treatment provider for uninsured residents with opioid use disorder. The program, funded by money that Orange County received through national settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors, is available at no cost, and is designed for people with chronic or severe addiction who lack the resources to access treatment otherwise. Read full article.
A middle-aged man from Melbourne was arrested by an Orlando Police Department officer in May after spitting on a pro-choice volunteer outside of abortion clinic The Center of Orlando for Women. Although no firearm was used during this altercation, video footage also showed that during his arrest, police discovered that Sepulveda was armed with a small gun attached to his ankle. The gun was not mentioned in the arrest affidavit. Read full article.
City officials in Orlando quietly shut down the city’s decades-old citizens’ police review board, following the adoption of a new state law on July 1. The law, approved earlier this year by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, restricts local civilian oversight of law enforcement agencies. Such oversight, generally established in the form of a citizen board or panel, was already restricted under Florida law from investigating or disciplining officers for alleged misconduct. Read full article.
Eva’s Casita, a peer respite center run by the local nonprofit Peer Support Space, officially opened its doors this summer. It’s the first of its kind in Central Florida and the first and only in the nation designed and led by LGBTQ+ mental-health advocates. Read full article.
Wells Fargo workers at the branch location in Apopka voted unanimously to unionize in March, joining a growing number of unionized branch locations nationwide. The Wells Fargo organizing campaign, driven by a desire for better working conditions, pay and staffing, has been years in the making, according to organizers, but only recently notched its first victories through formal union elections. Read full article.
A Florida lawmaker who co-sponsored legislation that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to work on residential construction projects is himself the owner of a roofing company that’s been found guilty in the past of breaking federal wage and hour laws. Perry Roofing Contractors, a Gainesville-based company founded and led by Florida Sen. Keith Perry, has been sued at least six times for wage theft, and was later cited by the federal government. According to court records dating back to 2006, former employees who sued had claimed to be paid for piecework, and said they weren’t paid for overtime they were lawfully entitled to under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Read full article.
Dozens of union flight attendants for major U.S. airlines including Southwest, American and United picketed outside Orlando International Airport in February, as part of a global day of action spanning more than 30 major airports in the United States, the United Kingdom and Guam. The protest was organized as a call to improve industry standards for flight attendants. It marked a historic act of solidarity by an estimated 100,000 workers represented by three labor unions. Read full article.
As people with an unwanted pregnancy in Florida face ever greater barriers to abortion care, a new “clinic” for pregnant people that aims to persuade people not to seek abortion care opened in Kissimmee this year. Choices Women’s Clinic, is the third location in a chain of facilities operated by Choices Women’s Clinic, a local nonprofit founded and operated by anti-abortion Christians. These facilities lure in people with few resources by offering free pregnancy tests, free ultrasounds, and information about your options as a pregnant person. Critics call them “fake abortion clinics.” Read full article.
Credit: Charlotte Cooper, via wikimedia commons

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.