Brewdog row continues as brewery accused of fostering a toxic working environment

Punks With Purpose, a new twitter group, published the open letter to the company claiming that many who worked at the company were suffering from mental health issues after enduring a culture of fear in the company.

A passage towards the end of the letter was directed to CEO James Watt and said: “It is with you that the responsibility for this rotten culture lies.

"Your attitude and actions are at the heart of the way BrewDog is perceived, from both inside and out.

‘We believe this shows your true feelings of disregard for your staff’: Brewdog row continues as brewery accused of fostering a toxic working environment

"By valuing growth, speed and action above all else, your company has achieved incredible things, but at the expense of those who delivered your dreams.”

This open letter was signed by over 100 employees and former employees with the brewery.

Brewdog was founded in 2007 by James Watt and Martin Dickie and is now a multinational company.

As well as the brewery, the company owns pubs across Scotland and the UK.

Mr Watt responded to the letter with an apology, saying: “"Our focus now is not on contradicting or contesting the details of that letter, but to listen, act and learn.

“At BrewDog we are focused on building the best business we can, which is why the open letter we saw on Twitter was so upsetting, but so important.

On Friday, a response to the apology letter was given saying that the aim of the original letter was not to damage the company, but to create lasting change at Brewdog that will aid the well being of the employees.

Again published on Punks With Purpose twitter account, the response said: “We are glad to see that you found our comments hard to read, because they were indeed hard to write – but please realise that they alluded to merely a fraction of the stories we have shared together as a group.

“Many of our signatories worked for BrewDog for years and were extremely high-performing.

"To suggest that those who apparently couldn’t hack it are somehow less worthy in your eyes is grotesque.

"We believe this shows your true feelings of disregard for your staff, both former and current.”

The Punks with Purpose account now has 11.4K followers.

Their response continued: “We are not going away. We want to see the evidence of the change you have publicly committed to.

"Many of us worked for you for long enough to have heard you apologise and promise change several times already, so you’ll have to forgive us if we seem sceptical.

"Perhaps a useful first step would be to stop writing fiction on Linkedin about siting on the same orange Ikea chair for fourteen years.”

The brewery, which was founded in Fraserburgh, moved its main brewing operations to Ellon in 2012.

A message from the Editor:Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.