15 March 2022
A response to James Watt’s comments from 14 March
We categorically refute the claims made by James Watt as a response to the Guardian Article of 14 March 2022 (“BrewDog boss hired private investigators to gather evidence of alleged smear campaign“) that one of the Punks With Purpose founders is implicated in any legal case that may exist regarding BrewDog. None of our founding or current members have been contacted by BrewDog, James Watt, lawyers representing either party, or the police.
At our core, Punks With Purpose are a small group of ex-colleagues and have never claimed to speak on behalf of all signatories of our open letter. Those people voluntarily signed because they agreed with what we had to say, and our end goal of helping BrewDog to be the company we all know it could be.
In our open letter, published in the summer of 2021, we raised attention to a culture of fear at BrewDog. BrewDog, in response, have claimed that such a culture did not exist, and that other issues raised in the letter are in the past. In their responses they say the company has grown into one where staff are treated with the respect they deserve.
We are saddened to hear that BrewDog would have Private Investigators to intimidate ex-staff and BBC sources for the documentary “The Truth About BrewDog“. This highlights that the supposedly non-existent culture of fear remains alive and well, and intimidation is still a key tactic for BrewDog’s management.
We had hoped that the shadow of this culture of fear ended for staff members when they ceased working for the company, but this news suggests otherwise.
We call on BrewDog to end all intimidation of ex-staff immediately, and to open avenues of discussion with them to fully address their concerns and to allow them to help BrewDog grow into the force of good it should and can still hopefully be within the craft beer industry.
We would encourage all of those impacted by these intimidatory actions to register a case with Hand and Heart’s Affected Workers Registration Platform.