Steve Morley has discovered the workforce again. This is encouraging news because the last time TCAP encountered his sudden devotion to “the people” of Cummins Darlington, he had transported their collective honour all the way to Buckingham Palace without the inconvenience of bringing most of them with him. Now our unelected shop-floor ambassador has returned from the royal shrubbery and found another opportunity to celebrate human beings: a recognition lunch. Plates are full, hi-vis jackets are glowing, fizzy drinks are sweating gently on the table and Steve is once again overcome by the magnificent people who make Cummins possible. It is touching stuff. Particularly if you happen to remember what happened when one of those people needed an actual adjustment rather than a fucking sandwich.
Morley’s latest LinkedIn sermon celebrates three years of work getting Darlington ready to build a new engine. Engineers, operators, technicians and project teams all receive their ceremonial pat on the head, while Morley explains that when he talks about investment and transformation he “nearly always” comes back to the people behind it. He closes by saying he is proud of what Darlington manufactures but “even prouder” of the people who make it possible.
Awww. Oscar, fetch the fancy napkins. Management has rediscovered humanity.
From Buckingham Palace To The Buffet Table
Regular TCAP readers have seen this version of Steve before. Earlier this year, Morley attended the King’s Garden Party and announced that he was honoured to represent Darlington Campus and the colleagues whose work made its success possible. Around 1,750 people had spent decades building engines, staffing lines, maintaining machinery, solving production problems and carrying sixty years of industrial history on their backs. Steve went to Buckingham Palace.
It was an elegant division of labour. The workforce supplied the shifts, the overtime, the process knowledge, the broken machinery, the engineering expertise and the accumulated industrial muscle of Darlington. Their plant manager supplied a lounge suit and sufficient free space in the diary for cucumber sandwiches. TCAP christened the episode Steve Morley’s Royal Day Out, because calling it worker representation seemed unfair both to the workers and to the English language.
Apparently, however, one ceremonial annexation of the workforce was not enough. Steve has now moved from palace lawns to buffet tables, once again wrapping himself in everybody else’s contribution like a middle-management comfort blanket. The scenery has changed, but the trick remains familiar: stand beside collective achievement, describe the workforce as “our people”, then allow LinkedIn to perform the emotional heavy lifting.
The People Behind It
Morley’s latest post talks repeatedly about “the people behind” Cummins Darlington. I recognise the demographic because I was one of them. Not metaphorically, not spiritually and not through some LinkedIn concept of belonging involving hashtags, inspirational nouns and a chicken dinner. I actually worked there. I stood inside the place, dealt with the systems, knew the people and became part of the employment machinery Morley now describes with the warm glow normally reserved for John Lewis Christmas adverts.
Unfortunately, my branch of the people story did not come with lunch.
When my employment reached its final stage, I was dealing with documented mental-health problems and had explained the difficulties affecting my attendance. I wanted the dismissal hearing conducted remotely. Cummins refused that option, and Morley proceeded with the capability process anyway. That is the same Steve Morley who can now barely discuss manufacturing investment without apparently becoming misty-eyed about the human beings making it happen.
Funny how flexible “people first” becomes once one of the people needs Microsoft Teams.
The Buffet Has Better Adjustments
The contrast would be funny if it were not so fucking bleak. A recognition lunch is easy. Nobody needs a risk assessment to eat roast potatoes. Nobody has to interpret medical evidence before handing somebody a fork. There is no argument about whether the salad bar constitutes a reasonable adjustment, and HR does not need external legal advice before authorising gravy. Everybody sits down, somebody takes a photograph and LinkedIn receives the warm copy afterwards.
Actual disability management is less photogenic. It involves inconvenient questions about health, flexibility, attendance, medical evidence and whether a process designed by the company might need altering for the person trapped inside it. That version of inclusion does not come with 181 reactions and little coloured hearts underneath. It comes with paperwork, decisions and consequences.
Steve was apparently less sentimental there.
Oscar Applies For Plant Manager
Oscar has reviewed the latest Cummins leadership literature and would now like to apply for Steve’s job. His qualifications are admittedly mixed. He is a Shih Tzu, his understanding of advanced manufacturing is largely confined to investigating noises in the kitchen, and his strategic planning usually involves positioning himself approximately eighteen inches from any available food source.
Still, the comparison is becoming uncomfortable.
Oscar also loves people when lunch appears. Oscar can pose for photographs beside plates. Oscar is perfectly capable of attending events he did not personally organise and behaving as though the day is broadly about him. Most importantly, if somebody told Oscar they were unwell and could not physically attend a meeting, his instinct would probably not be to construct a management process around their failure to appear.
He would stare at them, possibly sneeze, then go back to sleep.
We are already approaching a credible employee-relations improvement.
A Palace Lawn Is Apparently Easier Than Zoom
This is where Morley’s royal outing becomes useful again. Buckingham Palace managed to accommodate Steve. The recognition lunch managed to accommodate Steve. LinkedIn accommodates Steve with almost suspicious enthusiasm. Yet when an employee facing dismissal wanted to participate remotely because of mental-health difficulties, the corporate imagination apparently reached the buffers.
That contrast deserves framing because Cummins talks endlessly about technology, transformation, advanced manufacturing and the future of work. Darlington is supposedly changing through automation, new equipment, improved processes and enormous technical sophistication. Wonderful. Could anyone perhaps locate a webcam?
We are discussing a company capable of designing industrial engines, complex aftertreatment systems and global manufacturing processes. Somehow the proposition of letting a sick employee appear on a screen became a bridge too fucking far. NASA landed people on the Moon with less computing power than sits inside Steve Morley’s phone. Cummins could not get Lee Thompson onto Zoom.
Open Garden, Closed Hearing, Full Buffet
The earlier Royal Day Out piece used the phrase Open Garden, Closed Hearing, and Steve has now kindly supplied a sequel. We can add Full Buffet and turn the whole thing into a three-course management philosophy.
At Buckingham Palace, Morley represented the workforce. At the recognition lunch, he celebrates the workforce. During my dismissal process, he judged one member of that workforce without hearing me live. His dismissal record, as TCAP has already documented, involved a process moving ahead despite the health context and my inability to participate in the way Cummins demanded.
That version of Steve is somewhat less cuddly than LinkedIn Steve. LinkedIn Steve practically wants to knit the workforce a blanket. Dismissal Steve appears considerably more comfortable turning the blanket into an exhibit.
The People Are Wonderful Until They Become Difficult
Corporate language about “our people” has always had this problem. Employees remain wonderful while they are productive, photogenic and collectively abstract. Engineers are brilliant. Operators are brilliant. Technicians are brilliant. Project teams are brilliant. Collaboration is brilliant. Arrange them around a table with lunch and you have corporate nirvana: smiling human capital positioned around catering trays like a Renaissance painting sponsored by SAP.
Individual employees are harder. An individual employee gets sick. An individual employee complains. An individual employee disputes records, asks awkward questions or needs an adjustment. Individual people have rights, histories and inconvenient circumstances that interfere with the beautifully engineered forward motion of management procedure.
Suddenly the warm collective noun starts acquiring exclusions. “Our people” becomes “this employee”. The hashtags disappear, the photographs stop and the tone changes from celebration to process.
That is the point where corporate affection reveals whether it has any structural value or was merely decorative upholstery.
Three Years In The Making
Morley begins his latest post by telling readers the manufacturing achievement was three years in the making. That phrase has an accidental elegance because TCAP is now a couple of years into examining what Cummins Darlington management did when things became difficult. The difference is that our recognition event does not involve sausages, laminated place cards or somebody from leadership congratulating everyone for completing the project.
We get documents.
Witness statements, emails, Occupational Health correspondence, grievance records, dismissal papers and Tribunal evidence are considerably less photogenic than a lunch table, but they have one useful characteristic: they remember things after LinkedIn has moved on to the next milestone.
That is the nuisance with a documentary record. A corporation can change the photograph. Documents keep the old scenery.
Even Prouder Of The People
Morley ends by declaring that he is proud of what Darlington manufactures but “even prouder of the people who make it possible”. There is nothing wrong with that sentiment. In fact, it is exactly how a plant manager should think. The difficulty begins when the statement is placed beside the management record.
Pride in employees should mean more than applause when a project succeeds. It should survive sickness, inconvenience and disagreement. It should survive an employee becoming difficult to manage. Most importantly, it should survive the moment when somebody stops being useful corporate scenery and starts requiring something from the institution.
Otherwise it is not people-first leadership.
It is hospitality with a comms team.
The People Behind The Picture
There is nothing inherently objectionable about the lunch photograph itself. People worked hard. A project reached a milestone. They deserved recognition. Good. Feed them twice. Give them dessert. Send them home early if you are feeling revolutionary.
The ridicule belongs elsewhere: in the management habit of repeatedly converting everybody else’s work into leadership content while inconvenient chapters of the same workforce history sit outside the frame. Steve Morley has become remarkably skilled at standing beside collective achievement. Palace anniversary, manufacturing milestone, recognition lunch, investment programme, National Manufacturing Day. The people are always there, glowing warmly in the prose.
It would almost convince you that employee welfare radiates naturally from the man like heat from a QSK60.
Then you open the file.
Oscar Would Like A Garden Party
Oscar remains disappointed that Cummins has still not invited him to represent Darlington Campus. Personally, I think he has a strong case. He owns formalwear. He understands ceremonial loafing. His hair already resembles something worn by a minor Georgian aristocrat, and if you placed him on the Buckingham Palace lawn nobody would question his constitutional role for at least twenty minutes.
Better still, Oscar would never claim to represent 1,750 workers. He represents Oscar. There is an intellectual honesty to that.
Perhaps this is where Cummins leadership training has gone wrong. A small dog understands instinctively that appearing beside something does not mean you created it, represent it or acquire moral ownership of everyone who made it possible. Steve attended the Palace; workers built the legacy. Steve attended lunch; workers delivered the programme.
Those propositions do not require synergy.
Recognition Works Both Ways
Morley says he nearly always comes back to the people behind the investment and transformation at Darlington. TCAP would encourage him to keep coming back, but to broaden the guest list.
Come back to the easy ones sitting around the lunch table. Come back to the awkward ones. Come back to the sick ones, the people whose emails irritated management and the employees asking for adjustments. Come back to those who do not photograph well for National Manufacturing Day and to workers after they become a problem rather than before they become a hashtag.
That would make “the people behind it” mean something. Otherwise it is merely another corporate garnish: parsley scattered over the achievement after the difficult bits have been removed from the plate.
From Royal Tea To Recognition Lunch
The progression is almost perfect. First, Steve Morley represented the workforce at Buckingham Palace. Now he is celebrating them over lunch. Somewhere between royal tea and corporate catering sits another version of his leadership record: the version in which an unwell employee faced a dismissal process, wanted remote participation and still found the machinery moving forward.
Those versions of Steve can coexist. Humans contain contradictions, while corporate LinkedIn appears to manufacture them at industrial scale. But if you repeatedly use “the people” as the emotional currency of your public image, eventually somebody who used to be one of those people may ask what the exchange rate looked like when he needed something back.
Mine appears to have been shit.
Proud Of The People, Provided There’s A Buffet
So congratulations to everyone involved in the Darlington manufacturing programme. Seriously. Engineers, operators, technicians, project teams and everybody else who spent three years getting the plant ready deserve recognition for doing the actual work. Have lunch. Have two. Put your feet up. You earned it.
As for Steve Morley, congratulations on rediscovering the workforce between ceremonial engagements. The Palace photographs were lovely. The buffet looks serviceable. LinkedIn is suitably moved. TCAP merely remains fascinated by the extraordinary elasticity of corporate affection.
When workers build something successful, they are our people. When they make management look good, they become the people behind it. When one of them becomes ill, confrontational, inconvenient or difficult to process, management suddenly discovers the colder vocabulary of procedure.
Steve says he nearly always comes back to the people.
Excellent.
Some of us never fucking left.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Steve Morley – LinkedIn profile and October 2026 National Manufacturing Day recognition-lunch post
- TCAP – Steve Morley’s Royal Day Out
- TCAP – Steve Morley : Open Mind, Closed Hearing
- TCAP – Six Months Of Alleged Hostility And Steve Morley Still Wants To Cosplay Competence
- Steve Morley witness statement, held by TCAP
- Cummins dismissal outcome signed by Steve Morley, dated 17 February 2023, held by TCAP
- Mercer and Thompson email chain concerning the February 2023 hearing, held by TCAP
- GP fit notes, Occupational Health correspondence and reasonable-adjustment communications supplied to Cummins, held by TCAP