Cummins Inc. is now officially a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion”. No, really – they’ve scored 100 out of 100 on Disability:IN’s Disability Equality Index, three years in a row. You might call it a hat trick of virtue. I call it a slick bit of corporate pyrotechnics, lighting up their brand while everyone’s watching the wrong show.
Why? Because to even be considered for that award, you pay first. You sign up as a corporate partner – sound familiar? Money upfront, applause later. So yes: first, pay, then play. It’s cheap power posing. That badge may glow with inclusion, but it’s soldered on a platform built with your own cash. The better question: Who’s doing the due diligence
Cummins is currently entangled in a tribunal over disability discrimination in the UK. And they’ve already got one defeat to their name after Waqas Mohammed – a machinist with decades of sweat under his belt – took a mental-health break and got a disciplinary hearing instead. The tribunal found against Cummins, calling it discrimination arising from disability. The payback? A modest £30k-ish for injury to feelings – money meant to compensate real harm. Hardly a victory lap.
But within months, Cummins is basking in awards for being “inclusive.” The only thing missing? A look at actual employee experiences. No mention of a guy who begged for help and got fired. No whisper about the dozens who feel they dare not ask for the same support.
Meanwhile, Disability:IN plays referee. They aren’t a media outlet – they’re a network. If you want to be on the roster, you sign up, you obtain access, you show your inclusion report (based on your own disclosures and policies), they score you – and then put you on the stage. It’s not outright cash-for-award corruption, but it is sponsorship wrapped up as celebration. Sponsorship means their business depends on companies like Cummins continuing to pay and project inclusion, even when inclusion fails people internally.
Imagine being that sponsor: you glance at the headlines – except the headline is about how you lost against a disabled worker, while quietly trying to gaslight everyone with an award certifying your virtue. Is that not the most grotesque form of virtue theatre? Because it looks less like redemption and more like deflection – like covering a wound with a shiny sticker that says “healed.”
Let’s be frank: awards don’t clean reputations. They only paper over messes. Inclusion used as PR without internal reform? That’s not noble. That’s hypocrisy in a pinstriped suit. And if what’s inside is rotting – tribunal rulings, silenced voices, HR that punishes discomfort – no amount of plaques will get rid of the stench.
So here’s the pointed question: why are the only people saying nice things about Cummins – about how inclusive, ethical, progressive it is – those who have been paid to say it? Because the real ones – people like Mohammed – don’t get invited to the stage. They get silenced in the backroom. And you don’t score a perfect “disability inclusion” after being found guilty of… disability discrimination!
Cummins may want us to think they’ve evolved into the pearl of corporate virtue. But if that’s the case, the pearl is hiding behind a shell, and it’s not fooling anyone paying attention. The real story isn’t in the award. It’s in the ones they didn’t protect, the ones they gaslit, the ones they tried to bury under expensive lawyers and PR. No plaque in the world can cover that up.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project