Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch announced in a statement yesterday that it would be laying off some 350 employees, with many of the positions being corporate.
The layoffs come as fallout continues from an ill-advised advertising campaign involving trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The company, however, attempted to downplay the move as it said the layoffs would affect less than 2% of its approximately 18,000 employees nationwide.
Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said, “Today we took the very difficult but necessary decision to eliminate a number of positions across our corporate organization.”
“While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success,” Whitworth explained.
The company insisted that the move was designed to “simplify and reduce layers within its organization” and will not include frontline staff such as “brewery and warehouse staff, drivers, and field sales, among others.”
Conservative influencer DC Draino responded to the news in a tweet and called out Whitworth as he said, “Bud Light CEO would rather lay off 400 workers than apologize or resign himself.”
Bud Light CEO would rather lay off 400 workers than apologize or resign himself https://t.co/Sb1LWeDbnn
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 27, 2023
The company also was criticized in June TikTok Video where Mulvaney said, “For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all.”
