This site will recognize businesses and organizations in six northeast Georgia counties that are Worker Friendly.

1. Why was this website created?

The Brief Answer
To provide easy access to businesses and organizations that voluntarily offer wages and benefits contributing to individual, family, and community well-being in six northeast Georgia communities.

The Long Answer
We are a group of consumers and employers in Athens Clarke County who began meeting in 2006 to address the effects of poverty on our community. Most of us are fortunate enough to have decent incomes and live in nice homes. But we work daily with fellow employees and interact in the community with many other residents who are struggling to provide for the basic needs of their families.

For many years, individual and corporate consumers have been educated to believe that buying goods and services at the lowest possible price is a laudable goal. While this approach may appear logical at the level of the individual person or business, it fails to take into account that we exist collectively as an interdependent system. Too often, lower prices come at someone else’s cost—by increasing productivity to the point that work stress is unacceptably high or in the form of reduced wages and benefits. At some point, the working conditions, wages and benefits needed to produce the goods and services we desire at the lowest possible cost are insufficient to sustain individuals, families and communities. We believe our country has gotten to this point.

As individual and corporate consumers, we wish to take a new direction. With our dollars we want to support businesses and organizations that provide working conditions enabling all individuals and families to live a decent life. We consider basic needs to be shelter, food, clothing, a reliable form of transportation, basic health care, enough money to pay taxes, and—for families with children—public education and child care that would support the growth and development of children. We also wish to support employers that encourage employees and their families to improve their education and work skills, save for retirement, and enjoy their leisure time. Somewhere over the last 50 years we have lost the American Dream—that everyone is entitled to a decent living if they are willing to work for it. To get the American Dream back, we must temper our individual tendencies in support of the collective good.

We strongly believe in taking a positive approach. At times business owners are viewed as “the enemy” or self-serving. We believe this approach is not helpful. Businesses cannot charge more than their consumers are willing to pay. Therefore, the buck stops here—with us as consumers. If we want to change business practices, we must first change the consumer. We believe that there are many employers who care deeply about their employees and wish to provide good working conditions, decent wages, and adequate benefits. This website is a result of our search for a way to honor these employers.

We have derived this website solely for our own purposes. But others who share our values are welcome to join us. There are no membership fees. We have no organized structure. We have no budget. We are just a group of individual and corporate consumers who believe that we must consider more than ourselves when making purchasing decisions.

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