Peachy Green Clean Cooperative Economic justice coalition worst cleaning company I have worked for Athens Georgia

RipoffReport user AthensArtist has made numerous groundless and libelous remarks on RipoffReport.com about Peachy Green Clean Cooperative (PGCC), LLC. These remarks were intended to damage the public image of PGCC but the truth is that these claims in no way represent the reality of our young cleaning cooperative. Numerous unfortunate misunderstandings led to this post from a former intern of Economic Justice Coalition (EJC) and brief working member of PGCC.

We will be the first to tell you the co-op is not made up of saints, but real people working for a really good cause and we would be remiss to not call a spade a spade and say that AthensArtist was unhappy when he left the co-op and has resorted to petty lies to convey his unhappiness. Frankly, it’s impossible to make everyone happy. We all learn this, particularly when we really want everyone to be happy: be it with our report card, small business, wedding, or otherwise. But seeing the bigger picture, this is a great chance to talk about who we are and what we believe in at Peachy Green Clean.

Our origin story goes back to the creation of the Economic Justice Coalition in 2003 (thanks to Dr. Ray MacNair) as an organization dedicated to educate, advocate and organize for quality jobs with living wages and benefits (and more which you can learn from EJC’s website). Under Ray’s leadership EJC formed Unity Cooperative Labor Partners as a handyman service. Then, in 2011, just a year before Ray’s passing, EJC took a 2 day car trip to Chicago for the US Social Forum where they learned about the worker-owned cleaning co-op model. The seed was planted which would become the Peachy Green Clean Co-op right here in Athens-Clarke County.
 

We began as a worker-owned cleaning business officially in May 2015. The bylaws and business plan of the Peachy Green Clean Cooperative, LLC, were crafted by a lawyer and started through a small business program thanks to Goodwill of Athens, GA. Creating a business is often times time-consuming, expensive and bumpy due to pot-holes. We had envisioned offering benefits to our members soon after opening, however given the nature of independent contract work the co-op cannot provide benefits and as such our members duly voted to structure our co-op without them. PGCC maintains regular meetings which are open to the public and where minutes are taken and approved that reflect our progress toward the commitments of being a model social enterprise.

PGCC has been cleaning for 4 months, has 5 members and we are on the move to clean more homes and businesses than ever in the coming months and years. It feels like we’ve put in so much time just to get here but we’ve only really just begun and with help from other cleaning co-ops around the country we are absorbing knowledge like a sponge.
 

Cooperative models are not the norm; however similar models exist throughout Georgia and the nation. Examples include cooperative electric companies (EMCs), credit unions and retail grocery stores that offer benefits for member investments. PGCC’s co-operative member investment is currently $25. PGCC considers this money an investment because each cooperative member is considered an owner and are allowed to vote on changes, directions, acceptance of new members and distribution of profits.

Peachy Green Clean Cooperative stays true to the idea of an all-natural green clean. PGCC buys its ingredients locally. The cost of the ingredients purchased locally is not always cheap and are more than just water. To date there have been no donated supplies or equipment. Supporting local businesses is one of the many great values that PGCC’s customers appreciate.

PGCC owes a debt of thanks to the Economic Justice Coalition. Without them we would not have an office space nor computers or software licenses with which to stay organized and effective as a cleaning business – we couldn’t do it without EJC! (For the record, EJC has confirmed multiple times with Microsoft about the agreement and usage of TechSoup software by Peachy Green Clean Co-op.)

We will not argue with AthensArtist who has submitted this report anonymously. We cannot claim we have always provided the best education or feedback to AthensArtist in his role cleaning for our co-op in its formative stage. We are the first worker-owned cleaning co-op in Georgia and as such it’s not surprising AthensArtist has had some misunderstandings about what being a co-op means, including having an operations manager accountable for the jobs we do, or the actual amount raised in our GoFundMe campaign (see below) to help provide seed capital for our business. At the time we had not yet produced any financial reports to show him just what amount we really had made, nor how much we’d spent to get to this point. For those oversights we apologize, and in fact thank AthensArtist for his contribution to get us this far. We hope for peaceful resolution in the near future.
 

In the meantime, we want to show you the Peachy Green Clean difference! Give us a call today at 706-248-4601 and see it for yourself – all quotes are free. Thanks for reading!

~The Peachy Green Clean Co-op team
10/2/2015