Cummins would like a round of applause for sponsoring a student race team while its Huddersfield workers edge towards the picket line. Cardiff gets funding, facilities, industry expertise, and the full warm newsroom cuddle. Huddersfield gets a pay row, “good-faith discussions”, and the sort of offer that somehow always arrives with its hand already in someone else’s pocket. Same company. Different photo opportunity.
Leave The Students Out Of It
To be clear, this is not a hit on Cardiff Racing.
They are students. They should be building improbable machines, living on bad sleep and worse food, and eating cold spaghetti hoops from the tin while trying to persuade a stubborn pile of components to become a car before Silverstone. If a large engineering company turns up offering money, facilities and industry expertise, most sane people in that position are not going to pause mid-battery-pack and conduct a moral audit on the sponsor’s industrial relations record in West Yorkshire.
They are trying to get a car to Silverstone, not chair a truth commission.
So no, this is not about sneering at a bunch of young engineers for taking support. Of course they took it. Most students would accept benevolent sponsorship from Satan himself if he turned up with workshop access, a budget line and a decent torque wrench.
The piss-taking belongs elsewhere.
It belongs with Cummins, which has once again found a lovely clean stage set full of bright faces, electric optimism and photogenic effort, then wheeled it straight into the newsroom while Huddersfield gets the other side of the company entirely.
Cardiff Gets The Gloss
Cummins says it is the main sponsor of Cardiff Racing. Funding. Facilities. Industry expertise. Thirty students. A fully electric single-seat car for Formula Student 2026. A partnership going back to 2003. More than 400 students supported. Twelve engineering graduates recruited into Cummins through the programme.
Lovely stuff.
It is the sort of corporate page that practically writes its own perfume. Youth. Talent. Opportunity. Skills. Placements. Careers. Electrified future. Even the Cwmbran site gets a tidy little glow-up, with the recent £30 million-plus investment dropped in like a polished cufflink for the local-growth crowd.
The whole thing is immaculate.
Which is, of course, why it is useful.
Huddersfield Gets The Other Cummins
Because while Cardiff gets sponsorship smiles and recruitment sparkle, Huddersfield gets the version of Cummins that starts talking like a hostage negotiator with an MBA.
Around 450 workers at the Huddersfield turbo components factory were reported as heading towards industrial action after rejecting a pay offer Unite described as strings attached. According to the union, the offer was 4.5 percent in the first year and 4 percent in the second, tied to changes in annual leave flexibility. Unite also said Cummins’ UK business reported £2.7 billion turnover and £312.5 million profit before tax for 2024.
And there it is.
There is always money for the nice picture.
There is always time for the nice quote.
There is always PR bandwidth for the future-facing cuddle piece.
But when workers want a pay deal without the usual little hand creeping across the terms and conditions, suddenly the language gets managerial, procedural and very fucking careful.
One Company, Two Costumes
That is what makes the Cardiff page worth taking the piss out of.
Not because student engineering is silly. Not because Formula Student is some kind of crime. But because Cummins has once again shown its talent for wearing two costumes in the same week.
In one costume, it is the benevolent engineering patron, helping bright young people build an electric race car and chase careers.
In the other, it is the profitable employer in Huddersfield, trying to land a pay deal that, according to Unite, comes stitched to detrimental changes around leave flexibility.
One face for the brochure.
One face for the bargaining table.
And the company still expects to be taken at its own valuation in both.
This Is What The Newsroom Is For
The Cardiff piece is not there by accident.
It is there because Cummins knows exactly how useful harmless good-news content can be when rougher stories are already in the air. Students are photogenic. Electric race cars are photogenic. Young engineers in branded fleeces talking about teamwork and the future are photogenic. Nobody looks at a Formula Student garage and thinks, “I bet the sponsor is trying to bury an awkward pay dispute.”
That is what makes it useful.
The students are there to build a car. Cummins is there to borrow the glow. One side gets workshop hours and a crack at Silverstone. The other gets a tidy little reputational rinse, served warm and flattering, while Huddersfield workers are left staring at a strings-attached offer and wondering which version of Cummins they are supposed to believe.
That is not engineering.
That is image management with a battery pack.
Same Brand, Different Weather
And this is why Cummins still deserves to be read as a whole company, not as a collection of conveniently separate moods.
Cardiff does not cancel Huddersfield.
A student race car does not cancel a pay row.
A £30 million investment mention does not cancel the old question of who gets looked after when the company starts moving numbers around.
The students deserve better than being used as a scented screen.
Cummins deserves the piss being taken.
Because when one arm of the brand is posing with the next generation while another is steering workers towards a strike over a strings-attached offer, the problem is not the students.
It is the brand.
And the brand, as ever, wants the applause without the accounting.
Lee Thompson – The Cummins Accountability Project