White Wing Watch

Part-time workers account for half of Walmart Inc’s ( WMT.N ) workforce, up from 20 percent in 2005, according to a labor group report on Friday that examined the company’s increased shift away from more expensive full-time employees. The report from the Organization United for Respect (OUR), formerly called OUR Walmart, said 69 percent of the part-time employees it surveyed would prefer the stability and greater income of a full-time job. Walmart’s share of part-time workers is well above the industry average of around 30 percent, it said. Over 7,000 Walmart hourly employees participated in the survey. The responses were collated online from 87 percent of them, or 6,176 current employees, the report said. OUR, which split from the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) in 2015, says it is a network of over 150,000 people working in low wage retail jobs and its largest support base is within Walmart.   The retailer’s spokesman, Kory Lundberg, said the company

Nation’s fastest growing big cities for 2017 Growth from 2016-2017 Atlanta, 2.8% Seattle, 2.5% Fort Worth, Tex., 2.2% Mesa, Az., 1.9% Charlotte, N.C., 1.8% Columbus, Oh., 1.8% San Antonio, Tex., 1.6% Minneapolis, 1.6% Las Vegas, 1.6% Colorado Springs, 1.5% Seattle has its critics . You’ve probably heard some fed-up folks  grumbling about leaving  the city — and now some  businesses , too, in the fallout from our controversial new head tax on large companies. But say what you will about Seattle, you can’t say that people don’t want to live here. The U.S. Census Bureau released new population figures for U.S. cities on Thursday, and they show that Seattle has toppled Austin, Texas, to become the nation’s fastest-growing big city this decade. Seattle moved into the top spot after registering yet another year of remarkable growth in 2017. The city’s population hit an estimated 725,000, gaining 17,500 people from July 1, 2016, to July 1, 2017. Our growth rate in that period — 2.5 percent —