Cummins Confidential Special : Fools Gold For Armed Forces Support

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Cummins certainly does.

Gold Stars For Good Behaviour

The Shakespeare line is about overacting innocence. The lady doth protest too much methinks.

Fast forward a few centuries and Cummins is out here protesting its love for the armed forces so loudly you can hear the brass band from Columbus. Bronze award. Silver award. Now a shiny Gold Award from the UK Defence Employer Recognition Scheme for being such a tremendous friend of reservists, veterans and cadet volunteers.

If there were a camera close enough you could probably see the PR department vibrating.

The press release hits all the expected notes. Global leader in power solutions. Continued commitment. Inclusive and supportive environment. Armed Forces Covenant. The word Gold sprinkled over everything like glitter on a remembrance wreath.

You would never know this is the same Cummins that had to be dragged through a tribunal for firing a veteran in the first place.

Bronze, Silver, Gold – And The Veteran They Fired

Let’s zoom out on the timeline.

Cummins signed the Armed Forces Covenant and picked up Bronze. It built a European Veterans Employee Resource Group. It started turning up at transition events and work experience days. In 2024 it took the Silver Award and told everyone it was aiming for Gold next year. In 2025, right on schedule, it gets the Gold badge and another set of photos with uniforms and logos.

So far so corporate. This is exactly how the scheme is supposed to work. You pledge, you demonstrate, you advocate, you climb the ladder.

Then there is the bit Cummins never mentions in these pieces.

While all that was happening on the brochure side, Cummins UK was busy firing an actual veteran – a man with service, medals and a mortgage – and only put him back on the books because an employment tribunal forced the issue. The veteran they tried to quietly grind out of the system is the same kind of person they now drape over their website as a moral accessory.

In the Cummins narrative there is no contradiction. In the real world it stinks.

One Of More Than 200 – Not The Victoria Cross

The Gold Award itself is not the villain here. It is a Ministry of Defence scheme. It has guidance, criteria and a nomination process. You do not just tick a box and print a certificate. To get Gold you are expected to provide extra paid leave for reservists, have actual HR policies for veterans and cadet force volunteers, and actively advocate for defence in your sector. That is the deal.

And Cummins is not unique. More than 200 employers across the UK now hold Gold level – from FTSE 100 names to hospitals, councils and local companies. This is a club, not a Victoria Cross.

You would not guess that from the Cummins write up. The tone is as if the King has personally singled them out as Best Friend Of The Forces 2025. No context. No mention that you are one gold logo among hundreds. Just selective framing designed to make Gold feel like a one off act of grace instead of a crowded badges scheme.

Again, the award is fine. What they do with it is the problem.

Remembrance As Stage Set

Then we get to the Remembrance bit.

This year’s Remembrance Day, we are told, saw about 900 employees across three UK sites – plus virtual attendees – pause and reflect in a company wide commemoration. Serving personnel and veterans invited in. Screensavers set to solemn. Everyone takes a minute in the calendar.

On its own, none of that is bad. People should stop and think about what was asked of the men and women in those uniforms. The problem is when Remembrance becomes a stage set instead of a reckoning.

Cummins is perfectly capable of turning out 900 people to sit in a room and listen to a scripted moment about respect. It is apparently less capable of not sacking the veteran who works for them. It will host uniforms on site for a photo. It will not put the story of the veteran it fired in the same press release.

You cannot wave your hands at Remembrance and hope everyone forgets the last time you actually had to decide whether a soldier mattered inside your own four walls.

Fools Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh And Diesel Jesus

There is something very on brand about Cummins shouting about a Gold Award in mid December.

We are one step away from a full nativity set. Gold for being nice to reservists. Frankincense for hydrogen engines. Myrrh for the people who have to breathe the exhaust fumes. Diesel Jesus in the middle, arms outstretched, in front of a HELM branded engine block.

The ERS scheme is supposed to be about aligning values with the Armed Forces Covenant. That is the language. Align values. Support those who serve. Go above and beyond.

Cummins is a company that:

Ran doctored engines to the point of a record Clean Air Act penalty and is still doing the recall work.
Is now paying out seven figures to investors who say they were misled about defeat devices.
Fired a veteran and had to be forced to put him back.

But sure. Let’s make this about how many extra days of paid leave a reservist gets for training.

You can call that Gold if you like. From the outside it looks suspiciously like fool’s gold – shiny enough at a distance, worth a lot less when you put it under any kind of light.

The Lady Doth Promote Too Much

The volume is the tell.

Silver award got a press release. Transition processes got a write up. The Veterans ERG got a write up. Gold now gets another full spread, quotes from internal champions, and a line about Cummins providing one to one guidance to other employers on how to be as good as them.

Nobody is saying reservists and veterans should not get support. They absolutely should. They deserve better than late trains, broken systems and indifferent HR. What they also deserve is honesty.

Honesty would sound like this.

We are proud of the support we provide to our ex forces colleagues. We are also the company that unlawfully fired one and only took him back because the tribunal gave us no choice. We are trying to do better.

Instead you get the language of gold standard values with the awkward bit cut out. A curated version of reality where the scheme is all halo and no shadow.

The lady doth protest too much methinks. Or in this case, the diesel manufacturer doth post too much.

What A Gold Logo Cannot Wash Away

So by all means, tick the covenant boxes. Give reservists their extra leave. Offer proper flexibility for spouses. Those things matter in real lives and no amount of Cummins cynicism changes that.

But do not confuse a badge from the Ministry of Defence with moral redemption. A Gold Award does not rewrite the tribunal history. It does not unfire the veteran they tried to be rid of. It does not dissolve the contradiction between seasonal poppy photos and the way the machinery actually treated a soldier who became inconvenient.

Gold on the website, red poppies in November, black ink on the covenant, and somewhere in the background a veteran who only has his job because a judge said so.

That is the real alignment of values.

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