Wal-Mart workers arrested in pay protest

’14 construction keeping pace with demand, analyst says

QUOTE OF THE DAY “This is the strongest lineup of products that Apple has ever had.”

Dozens of Wal-Mart workers and supporters were arrested Thursday in New York and Washington, D.C., where they protested in front of heiress Alice Walton’s Manhattan penthouse and the offices of the Walton Family Foundation offices.

The group, organized by the union-backed OUR Walmart (Organized United for Respect at Walmart), delivered signed petitions calling for the Walton family members to provide Wal-Mart employees with full-time work and hourly wages of at least $15 per hour.

On Wednesday, members of the group held signs and delivered a petition to the Phoenix home of Rob Walton, brother of Alice and chairman of the Wal-Mart board of directors. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s immediate family owns the majority of the company’s stock.

Wal-Mart President and Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said Wednesday that about 6,000 of the company’s 1.3 million U.S. workers make minimum wage and that he’d like to eventually break away from it.

“It is our intention over time that we will be in a situation where we don’t pay minimum wage at all,” McMillon said.

The average wage of Wal-Mart’s full-time workers is $12.92 per hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25.

Housing statistics for first six months of 2014 show the market is steady and sustainable in Benton and Washington counties, according to the biannual Skyline Report released Thursday.

The two counties issued 1,183 building permits in the first half of 2014, up 3 percent when compared with the first half of 2013. Benton County saw the most per- mits with 746, with Washington County reporting 437 for the period.

Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the Sam M. Walton College of Business in Fayetteville, said Thursday that the market is stable with building setting a good pace to keep up with demand. She said the current scenario is more favorable than compared to the days when speculative projects resulted in a glut of homes on the market just when the economy tanked.

“It doesn’t seem like we’re out of whack at all,” Deck said.

The semiannual report on the two counties, sponsored by Fayetteville-based Arvest bank, is compiled by the university center.

In the first six months of the year, there were 3,122 homes sold in the two coun-

ties, up 2.3 percent from the same period in 2013. In the two-county area, 31.3 percent of homes sold were in the Bentonville School District, with 18.2 percent sold in the Rogers School District.

The average price for homes sold in Benton County for the first half of the year was $188,084, up 2.2 percent from the average sale price a the end of 2013. In Washington County, the average sold price was $184,132, down 1.3 percent compared with the last six months of 2013.

Of the just over 3,500 homes for sale on the Multiple Listing Service real estate listing database in Benton and Washington counties at the end of June, the average list price was $270,467.

John Carpenter, senior vice president with Lindsey and Associates, one of the largest real-estate companies in Arkansas, said the housing market is stable and predicted strong demand going into the end of the year. He said appraisals have been higher this year and banks seem to be more willing to lend, which helps create demand.

Overall optimism in the market is helping in general, he added. Both sellers and buyers seem less worried about the economy.

Average price per square foot for a home in Benton County for the first half of 2014 was $ 84.58, up from $ 82.43 for the first half of 2013. In Washington County, the average cost per square foot for a home was $89.24 for the first six months of the year, up from $83.94 for the same period a year ago.