The founder of a “non-woke” marketplace is offering to help laid-off Bud Light workers find new jobs at “non-woke businesses.”
Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev announced this week that it was laying off 2 percent of its U.S. workforce, with the company saying that the layoffs would be focused on cutting corporate and marketing roles rather than frontline workers.
The beer brand suffered a drop in sales after being accused of going “woke” by teaming up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on a sponsored Instagram post this year. The conservative backlash and a boycott has continued for nearly four months.
Michael Seifert, CEO and founder of the anti-woke marketplace PublicSq., said in a tweet on Thursday that his company and “non-woke job board” RedBalloon were inviting former Bud Light workers to submit job applications to a “network of non-woke businesses.”
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An open letter from Public Sq. and RedBalloon urges the laid-off workers to “take a stand” against the “progressive politicization of our economy” by applying for a job at a company that promotes conservative values.
“We’re sorry that Anheuser-Busch leadership prioritized left-wing ideology over sound business practices,” the letter states. “You are the ones that suffer for Bud Light’s disastrous decision.”
“People like to say ‘go woke, go broke’ and in reality, the economic consequences rarely fall on the wealthy liberals that make the woke decision,” it continues. “Both PublicSq. and Red Balloon will distribute your resumes to our respective networks
of tens of thousands of pro-America businesses.”
Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch announced yesterday that they are laying off 350 employees.
Losing a job is never easy and it’s unfortunate their company decided to prioritize woke ideology over doing what was best for the brand.
So we want to help.
If any laid off Bud… pic.twitter.com/BvB9ksN7zq
— Michael Seifert (@realmichaelseif) July 27, 2023
A tweet from RedBalloon, sharing the same open letter, informed former Bud Light employees that they would be helped in finding “new opportunities without the woke nonsense.”
Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light’s parent company, just announced they will be laying off 350 employees following recent backlash to the brand.
No one should lose their job because of woke ideologies or agendas, and so we want to help.
If any laid-off Bud Light employee reaches out to… pic.twitter.com/k09PQ5ViES
— RedBalloon | Free to Work (@RedBalloonWork) July 27, 2023
A RedBalloon spokesperson told Newsweek in an email that “several” former Bud Light workers had already applied on Thursday and the company was “actively seeking to place them” in new jobs.
When asked what constituted a “non-woke business,” the spokesperson detailed a pledge that must be signed by companies in order to be listed on the job board.
“Thousands of businesses that have posted on RedBalloon in the last two years have signed a pledge saying that they will not discriminate against the personal beliefs of their employees, that they won’t infringe on the constitutional rights of their employees, nor invade their medical privacy,” the spokesperson said.
Newsweek also reached out for comment to PublicSq. and Anheuser-Busch InBev via email on Thursday.
Conservative outrage over the Bud Light incident, which involved the brand sponsoring a single social-media post and giving Mulvaney a custom beer can with her face on it, has extended far beyond the initial boycott.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, currently campaigning for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, recently threatened to sue the company for promoting “radical social ideologies” and breaching “legal duties owed to its shareholders” due to the sponsored Mulvaney post.
While definitions in common usage vary, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “woke” as being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”
“It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the “Black Lives Matter” movement,” the dictionary states. “By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.”