The Steve Morley Cummins record begins with his claim that he approached my dismissal with an open mind. His own evidence describes something else.
He had never properly dealt with me. When the process began, he had not read the appendices in detail or reviewed the supporting documents. Nevertheless, Cummins placed him at the end of a lawyer-assisted allegation factory and gave him three possible routes to terminate my employment.
Morley then proceeded without hearing me, gathered further material after my deadline to respond and wrote a 32-page outcome about my motives. He treated an explicit offer to attend Occupational Health as evidence that I probably would not attend. An agreed pause in a grievance became deliberate refusal. Detailed emails challenging the case became “no representations”.
That is not an open mind. It is a closed hearing followed by an essay in corporate clairvoyance.
The Decision Maker Who Had Not Read The Case
Morley’s witness statement says he was asked on 24 January 2023 to conduct the hearing. He had no meaningful previous dealings with me. At paragraph 21, he accepts that he had not yet read the appendices in detail and had not seen the associated documents.
Meanwhile, Shelly Mercer says Michael Abbott supplied the material and external legal advisers helped her draft the invitation. She also says Morley reviewed the draft and produced the final version.
Therefore, the supposedly independent decision maker approved a letter which already declared Cummins’ beliefs before he had fully examined the evidential foundation. The document described my conduct as serious insubordination, called my behaviour deliberately antagonistic and accused me of refusing grievance processes.
Morley may say those were only allegations. The language matters.
A genuinely exploratory letter would identify concerns and seek answers. This one arrived with culpability baked into the verbs.
Three Routes To The Same Exit
The invitation placed capability, gross misconduct and relationship breakdown into one meeting. That structure gave Cummins remarkable flexibility.
If my ill health and absence did not justify dismissal, “conduct” might. Should individual allegations prove weak, the company could aggregate every strained interaction into an irretrievable breakdown.
Even lawful or understandable acts could then become ingredients: complaining to regulators, challenging pay errors, changing an HR contact or criticising Cummins in public.
Morley’s dismissal letter used all three formulations. It terminated my employment summarily for gross misconduct, irretrievable breakdown “and/or capability”.
His later witness statement tried to tidy that up. At paragraph 71, he says I was not dismissed because I could not attend work. Yet the outcome described my continuing absence as unacceptable and upheld alleged non-engagement with Occupational Health as serious insubordination.
Capability was not an accidental footnote. Cummins placed it in the invitation, the findings and the dismissal formula.
Apparently, even the stated reason for dismissal received a post-production edit.
No Current Medical Advice, No Problem
Morley knew the immediate problem. My January fit note said I was unfit for work with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder and work-related stress. Earlier GP evidence warned against a capability review.
At paragraph 50 of his statement, Morley admits there was a lack of clarity about my health and that Cummins had not obtained current Occupational Health advice.
He pressed ahead anyway.
The reasons are revealing. Morley considered the allegations serious, feared further delay and thought my behaviour towards him and Mercer “was not great”. He also believed it might worsen if the meeting moved.
Thus, the very deterioration which should have encouraged medical caution became an argument for speed. Cummins lacked professional advice about the risk, so management filled the gap with confidence.
When defending the rejection of my risk-assessment request, Morley pointed out that nobody had asked him for one during eighteen years of employee relations work.
That is not an assessment. It is an anecdote about his inbox.
The request concerned this employee, this illness and this hearing. Previous employees failing to make the same request proved absolutely nothing.
Medical Uncertainty Became Evidence Against Me
Morley’s own outcome exposes the central flaw. He wrote that he could not determine whether my supposedly inconsistent responses were symptoms of my medical condition because Cummins needed Occupational Health advice.
Then he concluded that the responses were deliberate delaying tactics anyway.
That is an extraordinary reversal. The absence of medical evidence did not justify selecting the explanation most damaging to me. It meant Morley lacked a reliable basis for deciding why I was reacting as I was.
My mental-health condition could have affected my concentration, sleep, emotional regulation, perception of threat and ability to manage stressful correspondence. The medication I was taking could also have influenced how I felt and responded.
Neither possibility automatically excused every email. However, both required proper consideration before Morley diagnosed deliberate obstruction from his management chair.
Whether Occupational Health had specifically explained those possibilities to him is beside the point. Morley already knew I was signed off with anxiety, depression and work-related stress. Cummins also knew I was receiving medical treatment.
Occupational Health advice was needed to clarify the possible connection. Its absence did not make that connection disappear.
Morley was free to conclude that some communications crossed a line. What he could not rationally do was acknowledge medical uncertainty, refuse to wait for medical advice and then turn that uncertainty into proof of calculated misconduct.
He treated the possibility of illness as unconfirmed. He treated the possibility of bad faith as fact.
I Said Yes To Occupational Health. Morley Predicted No
The most grotesque reasoning appears in the dismissal outcome itself.
Morley quoted my email of 5 February:
“I’ll reiterate that I am absolutely willing to see your occupational health practitioner. Please include previous mental health issues in the referral, as they’re health issues.”
That should have punctured the allegation that I had simply refused Occupational Health.
At minimum, it demanded a focused question: would Cummins include the relevant mental-health history and arrange a new appointment?
Questions about my mental health would certainly have been more relevant than the repeated IBS questions, because IBS was not the reason for my absence.
Instead, Morley acknowledged the offer and overruled it with a prediction. He decided that the prospect of my attending remained “very low”, even if Cummins made the requested amendment.
Presumably, he was using his VO2 max as the benchmark.
The slob.
Read that again.
I said I was absolutely willing to attend if the referral accurately included my mental-health history. Morley responded, in effect: no, you probably are not.
Evidence from me became conjecture from him. Alongside a declaration of war. Blame Steve.
His conjecture prevailed.
The Meeting That Apparently Kept Being Postponed
Paragraph 65.3 of Morley’s witness statement says:
“The meeting had been postponed on a number of occasions at his request.”
Which meeting?
Cummins invited me on 2 February to attend on 8 February. Mercer and Morley repeatedly refused my request to postpone it. Their own chronology shows no previous date for this disciplinary hearing and no earlier postponement of it.
Perhaps Morley meant earlier capability meetings or Occupational Health appointments. If so, his sentence carelessly conflated separate processes while defending the fairness of this one.
Or perhaps it was a Freudian slip, suggesting those earlier meetings had merely delayed the dismissal hearing he was already waiting to schedule.
Oops.
That is what happens in “no accountability” companies. Stupid people make stupid errors. Luckily, your Cummins guardian angel is now here to help.
If he meant the dismissal hearing, the statement is unsupported by the chronology he provided.
Either way, the claim supplies a false impression of repeated indulgence. Cummins gave me less than four working days, dumped most of its documents late on 6 February, added evidence on 7 February and held the hearing on 8 February.
That is not a meeting postponed “a number of occasions”. So the hearing was in fact never postponed. What he tells us is that it was being planned as an eventuality anyway and postponed privately a number of times.
It is a timetable dragged to the finish line.
The Man I Criticised Chose To Judge Me
Before the hearing, I challenged Morley’s suitability. I referred to criticism of his evidence in an earlier Employment Tribunal case.
The Twitter demonstration also used his photograph, while my Ramside Hall comments threatened embarrassment to a management team he led.
Morley says he considered handing the process to another senior manager. Then he decided to remain because there was nothing to stop me taking the same approach towards a replacement.
That answer is astonishing.
The issue was whether he could remain visibly independent after becoming a subject of the dispute. His response was essentially that I might criticise the next person too.
Potential future criticism of somebody else did not cleanse his own position. Nor did repeatedly announcing that he possessed an open mind.
Morley may sincerely believe he acted impartially.
Bless him.
However, fairness also concerns appearance and structure. A manager who had been personally attacked, mocked and threatened with public embarrassment should not casually appoint himself the best judge of the critic’s character. But the place isn’t bursting with talent in the management ranks anyway. As soon as one pipes up with anything unsavoury there’s an unwritten “work in station lads” agreement. Which makes the line crawl. Team leaders and managers flap. But they’re just following the rules you’ve made. Take little Rob Cole for example, lads returned from lunch and had a few Record of Conversation printouts waiting. They were binned or ripped up in front of him. Authority at it’s finest.
The Empty Chair Produced A Full Psychological Profile
On 6 February, I confirmed I would attend. Late on 7 February, after Cummins rejected the risk-assessment request and my condition deteriorated, I said I could not.
Morley proceeded at 10:00 the next morning. Mercer later offered a deadline of 17:00 on 9 February for formal written representations.
I declined because I had already said I was medically unfit to prepare them and wanted contact to stop while my GP stabilised my condition.
Cummins was entitled to decide that the process could not remain paused forever. That does not excuse what followed.
Morley repeatedly said he lacked my account. Yet paragraph 69 of his own statement admits that I sent “a large number of emails” setting out challenges to both the process and the allegations.
His dismissal letter quoted those emails at length.
Formal representations were absent. My explanation was not.
Despite never questioning me, Morley made sweeping findings about intention. He decided I had deliberately delayed Occupational Health, deliberately subverted HR, deliberately antagonised contacts, deliberately avoided grievances and never genuinely intended to resolve matters.
Morley did not hear me.
Instead, he psychoanalysed the empty chair. Mystic Egg.
The Evidence Kept Moving After My Deadline
The process became even less balanced after 9 February.
Morley says he obtained the latest Occupational Health referral from Abbott on 13 February. Liam Warne sent a grievance timeline and related documents on 16 February.
Mercer also obtained correspondence from Kevin Graham that day. Presumably, an apprentice forwarded it for him, unless Graham was forced to take a reluctant break from eating.
The dismissal followed on 17 February. Morley’s outcome says the additional documents were enclosed with the decision.
On the records supplied, Cummins did not first send that post-deadline material to me for comment. It gathered evidence from its own managers after my opportunity to respond had expired, relied upon it and delivered it alongside the result.
That is a magnificent little corporate trick.
My late input was unacceptable. Theirs remained welcome until the day before dismissal.
Shelbourne’s Agreed Pause Became Obstruction
The second grievance exposes Morley’s method in miniature.
The contemporaneous Shelbourne emails show negotiation, not deliberate refusal. I proposed email questions because previous notes had misrepresented me. Shelbourne suggested reviewing the notes together during a call.
I accepted and said I would prepare a detailed formal grievance.
When I later explained that an Ethics complaint and annual leave had delayed the document, Shelbourne replied: “No problem”. She said Cummins would wait to hear from me in the new year.
Morley knew this. His outcome reproduced the exchange.
Nevertheless, he concluded that the evidence “overwhelmingly” showed deliberate refusal to engage.
Fucking dickhead.
The grievance was unfinished, and I had not restarted it before dismissal. Those facts permit criticism of delay. They do not prove a dishonest purpose.
Morley admitted he had not obtained my input on why the second grievance had stalled. He then filled that evidential hole with the inference most damaging to me.
In doing so, he appears to have inflicted quite the shitstorm of criticism upon Cummins. That will likely earn him another promotion because, well, Cummins.
Once again, uncertainty only travelled in one direction.
Public Criticism Became Gross Misconduct
My tweets were angry and confrontational. Their purpose was to warn Cummins and expose what I believed had happened, not to invent falsehoods for damage’s sake. They were also quickly deleted, the part left out.
Any reputational harm would have flowed from the conduct being exposed.
I fired warning shots. You persevered.
How much have you cost them so far, Steve? Tell us. How long before, like hydrogen, you are labelled more costly that worth? TCAP exists because of you, Steve.
Morley quoted the emails and posts accurately enough on their tone. He did not accurately distinguish my purpose from the consequences Cummins feared.
Context still mattered.
The posts arose after months of disputed adjustments, incorrect pay, contested records, failed internal escalation, a worsening mental-health crisis and a set of fucking cunts who seemed intent on making everything worse.
Still laughing now?
I had already escalated directly to Cummins President and CEO Jennifer Rumsey because the ordinary channels had failed. Rumsey then referred the matter to Graham.
I did not independently decide that Global Ethics was the natural destination for my concerns. Cummins’ own C-suite sent me there after I approached the top of the company, after becoming exasperated with stupidity of locals, more concerned with burying problems than solving them.
Graham’s response acknowledged company errors but largely minimised the conduct I had reported. Difficult questions arrived with supporting evidence and left stamped outside his remit or returned to the same corporate structure responsible for the dispute.
Morley later treated what he characterised as an intention to cause reputational harm as gross misconduct in itself. He barely separated false claims from uncomfortable criticism or threats from plans to publish evidence.
Everything adverse to Cummins went into one sack marked “breakdown”.
Not unlike the electrolyser business. LOL.
With a competent management team, people like Morley would have gone into the sack too.
Meanwhile, company mistakes received the gentlest possible vocabulary. Pay failures, an SSP1 problem and failures around adjustments were errors without malice, repackaged and delivered on beds of roses.
My reaction to those admitted failures became unpalatable conduct. Many would have been less restrained.
Cummins received context. I received character analysis.
Six Months Of Alleged Misconduct And No Timely Intervention
Morley’s case trawled through approximately six months of emails, complaints, Occupational Health disputes and deteriorating relationships.
The alleged behaviour did not suddenly appear in February 2023. Cummins claimed it had been happening for months.
That raises an obvious question. If my communications were genuinely so serious that they threatened employee welfare, amounted to insubordination and justified summary dismissal, why did Cummins not address them promptly through proportionate management?
Where was the early intervention?
Which clear instruction identified the specific conduct that Cummins considered unacceptable?
Did anyone warn me that repetition might lead to disciplinary action?
Cummins had plenty of lesser options. It could have established one accountable contact, agreed communication boundaries, required consolidated questions, specified response times or arranged mediation.
Management could also have issued an informal warning, followed by a formal warning if the conduct continued.
Most importantly, Cummins could have answered the underlying questions accurately and corrected disputed records before frustration became entrenched.
Instead, polite emails were frequently ignored or treated as advance notice for defensive activity. Errors involving pay, Occupational Health, adjustments and company records remained disputed.
The resulting correspondence was then accumulated for months and repackaged as a prosecution scrapbook.
The truth is that there was so little accountability and competence that they did not have a fucking clue. For six months, they might as well have been sticking crayons up their noses. Management Offices renamed the Ralph Wiggum suite.
They were that shit.
I am not exaggerating.
That creates an uncomfortable choice for Cummins.
Either the alleged conduct was not regarded as dismissal-worthy when it occurred, or management allowed a supposedly serious situation to deteriorate without using reasonable lesser measures.
Neither explanation supports the sudden presentation of summary dismissal as inevitable.
By February, Morley was examining six months of accumulated conflict as though every previous interaction had been part of one deliberate campaign. He gave little meaningful consideration to whether earlier intervention could have interrupted the pattern. Where was he when all this was going on? Letting an emplolyee cause other employees “real” distress? Oh, nowhere because it was contrived and fake and you’re a cunt.
Did Steve properly examine whether my worsening mental health and medication could have influenced the volume, timing or tone of my responses. Even generic advice? No of course not, because it wouldn’t have fit the curated case that they’ve somehow sold people.
Morley says he considered a final written warning and a move to another team or business unit. However, he rejected those measures because he did not believe my conduct would improve. Fuck off, you condsecending little prick.
Again, a forecast did the decisive work.
A warning would have tested whether clear boundaries changed the behaviour. Mediation would have tested whether the relationship could be repaired. A properly informed Occupational Health process could have examined the connection between illness, medication and communication.
Cummins tested none of those measures before declaring them pointless.
Summary dismissal therefore became the answer to a problem the company had allegedly watched develop for six months without applying the ordinary steps that might have contained it.
Morley did not prove that lesser measures would fail. He avoided trying them, predicted failure and called the prediction proportionality.
Steve Morley’s Open Mind
Morley’s 32-page outcome creates an impression of care through sheer weight.
Pagination is not impartiality.
He approved a pre-loaded allegation letter before fully reviewing the evidence. He pressed ahead without current medical advice, heard no live account and then made repeated findings about my hidden intentions.
Fresh company material arrived after my deadline, while my explicit Occupational Health offer was dismissed as improbable.
His witness statement later tried to separate the dismissal from capability, despite the dismissal letter saying otherwise. It also claimed that this meeting had already been postponed repeatedly when his own chronology showed no such thing.
The Steve Morley Cummins record shows no neutral resolution of uncertainty. He repeatedly selected the interpretation most useful to Cummins agenda (to downgrade their team and lower their average site IQ) and most hostile to me.
Open mind? Maybe at home.
Not when it mattered.
Wanker.
Lee Thompson
Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Steve Morley witness statement, particularly paragraphs 16 to 26, 35, 43 to 80 and 83, held by TCAP.
- Shelly Mercer witness statement, particularly paragraphs 5 to 9, 23 to 27, 41 to 52 and 71 to 80, held by TCAP.
- Cummins invitation to formal meeting, dated 2 February 2023, held by TCAP.
- Mercer and Thompson email chain, 2 to 9 February 2023, held by TCAP.
- Cummins dismissal outcome signed by Steve Morley, dated 17 February 2023, held by TCAP.
- Suzanne Shelbourne grievance email chain, 1 to 14 December 2022, held by TCAP.
- GP fit notes and medical correspondence supplied to Cummins, held by TCAP.
- Occupational Health referral correspondence, held by TCAP.
- Emails to Jennifer Rumsey and subsequent correspondence with Kevin Graham, held by TCAP.