After four years of negotiations, members of the Air Line Pilots Association International have ratified an agreement with Spirit Airlines and ended their five-day strike. The new five-year agreement, covering 500 pilots, calls for 10 percent raises for captains and 18 percent raises for first officers and signing bonuses for all pilots. The new agreement also spells out existing work rules and gives more scheduling flexibility to the airline.
Members of the National Federation of Public and Private Employees have preserved more than 200 jobs from being outsourced by the city of Pembroke Pines. The newly ratified agreement with the city calls for pension freezes and a four percent pay cut.
According to a study by the Brookings Institution, South Florida is in the bottom twenty of 100 metropolitan areas when it comes to recovery from the recession. While South Florida fared poorly in job creation and economic output, its worst raking in the study came from housing prices, which fell 44 percent from 2007 to 2010, putting South Florida in the bottom 7 metropolitan areas in the study.