This is my story. It’s raw, it’s personal, and it’s the way I remember it – not a court transcript, not an “objective” dossier. If you’ve read my other pieces (see the McCaughtrie post), you’ll know the cast and the smell of the place. What follows is how the grievance and appeal unfolded for me – how decisions were made, how lines were crossed, and why I came away feeling that the process had been deliberately neutered.
The Set-Up
I lodged a grievance after the McCaughtrie incident. Simple enough: I wanted an honest accounting of what had happened to me. What I got instead was a performance – badly staged, badly written, and with all the uncomfortable parts surgically removed.
After the stage-one meeting, the minutes were produced. Or rather: some minutes were produced. Crucial bits were missing. After not upholding the grievance, I asked for the full recorded minutes, and I was strung along. The company didn’t want those pages in the daylight. That much felt obvious. Eventually they came as I wouldn’t let it go. A document containing things I not only hadn’t said, but in some cases, the exact opposite of what I’d said.
They say always take somebody in with you to a meeting/hearing. I thought that was paranoid nonsense until this moment.
My friends, if you take one thing away from this article, take somebody into any meeting with you. Especially if you work at Cummins.
The Slip
During the appeal – the day I faced the rottweiler snarling underneath her Covid mask, Nicola Teasdale let something slip. In passing, a sentence that changed everything: Morton was “from a different area of the business” and that’s why “I chose her to handle the grievance”. That line landed like a dropped plate.
Why did it matter? Because in a company of Cummins’ scale, the appeal officer should be independent. The appeal is meant to be a safety valve – a new set of eyes – someone who can look at the original process and say whether it was fair. Instead, I was told the grievance officer was hand-picked – by the appeal officer! Teasdale admitted, in my hearing, that she chose Morton.
This was a case of the puppet-master picking the puppet. In ethical operations, you certainly do not let the person hearing the eventual appeal decide who hears the original grievance.
The Minutes: Edited, Delayed, Defanged
When I finally forced them to give me the minutes (after more than one request), they arrived late and gutted. And here’s the kicker: I had proof they’d been altered. Not a suspicion. Not a hunch. Proof. Whole statements I made were missing. In places, what I’d said was twisted into the exact opposite.
This wasn’t “poor note-taking.” It was weaponised editing. You could line up what I said against what was recorded and see, clear as day, that the official record was rewritten to neuter my grievance. When I confronted Morton, she stonewalled – evasive, PR-speak, generic platitudes. She never once explained why the record didn’t match my words. Because she couldn’t. Just directed me to The Rottweiler.
The Appeal Hearing: A Woman Barking Aggressively – How Dare Somebody Catch/Question Her?
By the time I sat in front of the appeal panel it felt like I’d walked into a rehearsal. People repeating lines. Avoidance tactics. A clear desire to keep the scraps of truth off the table. When Teasdale’s admission (that she chose Morton) resurfaced later, it confirmed what I’d felt in my gut – the governance around the grievance had been compromised from the start. Her aggression in the hearing was off the charts. To me, that wasn’t somebody angry with me – why would she be – she was projecting anger that her grievance scam had been found out.
Aftermath: Promotions and the Sour Taste of Reward
What’s the result for the people involved? Teasdale goes upwards. Promoted. Rewarded. The system – if it exists at all – seems to reward administrative theatre, not honesty. That’s the reality of Cummins. People who play lie get ahead; the one who asks awkward questions gets shoved off-stage.
Call it cynical, call it bitter – I call it observable. I was forced out of my role; I left with an experience that told me more about who is protected inside the company than who is accountable.
For My Former Colleagues
I am telling this because grievance processes are supposed to be safeguards. They are supposed to be independent mechanisms for truth and redress. In my case, the safeguard felt engineered to prevent redress. One person orchestrating an entire grievance process at a company the size of Cummins? Editing minutes so incriminating details disappear? Being evasive when asking why the minutes aren’t what I said (and provably so)?
I don’t expect anyone to take my word as gospel beyond the fact that this is my lived experience. I do expect readers – especially those inside Cummins – to ask themselves whether this is the system they want defending their name. Because right now it looks less like a system and more like a theatre of denial.
Final Thoughts
I’ve said it elsewhere: Cummins is where ethics come to die when nobody is watching. That’s not a legal conclusion – it’s an observation drawn from the pile of incidents, the patterns, and from my own little corner of the mess. I came for answers. I found a carefully curated story that protected the powerful and left me with the bill.
If you’re reading this inside the company and you feel uncomfortable, good. You should. If you’re a colleague who’s been brushed off, know this: you aren’t alone. And if you’re an outsider wondering why TCAP exists, this – this is part of why.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Both Natalie Morton and Nicola Teasdale have been approached for comment. Any such comments will be published in full.