Beacon Laundry’s half-page ad (Echo, July 3) trumpets the promise of ‘clean karma’.
This is the same business, a multimillion-dollar enterprise, that has just poached the primary client of Linen Shift – the social enterprise laundry created by the SHIFT Project. You may know that the SHIFT Project is a local and beloved charity, created and existing SOLELY to support women facing the prospect of homelessness in the Byron Shire. Linen Shift offers not only employment for at-risk women, but support in upskilling, finding safe housing, and further education.
During its set-up in Bangalow, Beacon gave an undertaking to SHIFT that its business model would not compete with Linen Shift. (See interview with Anne Goslett and Julie Wells in the Echo, 29 May). Beacon has reneged on this, thereby undermining Linen Shift and the women it employs. This leaves SHIFT in an extremely precarious and unsustainable position. Already having been forced to let go of some staff and reducing the hours of others, SHIFT is in damage control with deeply traumatic consequences for the women it employs and supports.
How’s THAT for ‘clean karma’?
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
