A day after denying that a former employee was the subject of harassment and pregnancy discrimination, Boulevard Brewing has changed its stance, acknowleded that workplace harassment did occur and apologized. The company has also fired a company executive.
“We have heard accounts of personal experiences that have shaken us to our core,” the Kansas City, Missouri-based craft brewery wrote in a second public statement titled “Reflecting.” “It has become undeniably clear that harassment did in fact occur, clear that we have issues – serious issues that we have failed to address.
“To those of you that we hurt, those we let down, those we failed to protect, we are deeply sorry.
The reversal comes amid public backlash to an initial statement from the company on Monday that stated that an investigation of the allegations a year ago found “that there was no harrassment or discrimination.”
In Tuesday’s statement, Boulevard declined to name the terminated executive or offer additional details on which department the now-former employee worked in. The decision was made after “additional, corroborated information” came to light, Boulevard wrote.
Boulevard said it will hire an external human resources agency to investigate issues of harassment and discrimination within the company. The firm will have “full access to all our people and all our records,” according to the statement.
Natalie Gershon, VP of marketing of Duvel Moortgat USA, Boulevard’s parent company, told Brewbound that the investigations will “go back as far as it takes.”
Boulevard will institute an anonymous reporting system for workplace concerns, create an employee panel to conduct investigations. The company has also convened a task force of female leaders, as Brewbound has reported.
In addition, the company will be “instituting enhanced and mandatory harassment, bias and discrimination training throughout the organization, and committing to improving diversity and inclusion.”
“This is the beginning of a long but necessary journey, a journey that has begun too late,” Boulevard wrote. “While we cannot undo the mistakes of our past, we are resolved to do better, and to be better.”
The anonymous former Boulevard employee detailed her experiences at the company on a Reddit forum for beer industry workers over the weekend. She alleged that her manager demanded to know if she and a female co-worker were pregnant and continued to ask when they refused to answer, and described other incidents of harassment. The incident was investigated by Boulevard’s human resources director, who “established that there was no harassment or discrmination,” the company wrote in its first statement.
Since the former employee shared her story, several other former employees have discussed working in what they described as a hostile environment. The anonymous former employee left the company in March 2020 as a result of the alleged harassment she faced while pregnant.