America's tech giants are taking a modern-day crash course in India's ancient caste system, with Apple (AAPL.O) emerging as an early leader in policies to rid Silicon Valley of a rigid hierarchy that's segregated Indians for generations.
Apple, the world's biggest listed company, updated its general employee conduct policy about two years ago to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of caste, which it added alongside existing categories such as race, religion, gender, age and ancestry.
The inclusion of a new category that has not been previously reported falls outside the scope of US discrimination laws, which do not explicitly prohibit caste.
The update comes after the tech sector, which sees India as its main source of skilled foreign workers, received a wake-up call in June 2020 when the California employment regulator sued Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) on behalf of a low caste engineer. who accused two high-caste bosses of blocking his career.
Cisco, which denies wrongdoing, says an internal investigation found no evidence of discrimination and that some of the allegations are baseless because caste is not a legally “protected class” in California. This month, the appeals panel rejected the network company’s offer to take the case to private arbitration, meaning an open court case could be heard as early as next year.
The dispute – the first U.S. lawsuit over alleged caste – forced Big Tech to face a thousand-year-old hierarchy in which Indians’ social position was based on family lineage, from the upper Brahmin “priestly” class to the Dalits, who were shunned as “untouchables” and sent to menial jobs. .
After the lawsuit was filed, several activist and employee groups began pushing for updated U.S. discrimination legislation, as well as calling on tech companies to change their own policies to help fill the void and curb caste.
Their efforts have had mixed results, according to a Reuters review of US industrial policy, which employs hundreds of thousands of Indian workers.
“I’m not surprised that the policy is going to be inconsistent because that’s pretty much what you’d expect when the law isn’t clear,” said Kevin Brown, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies caste issues. make it in US law.
“I could imagine parts of … (the) organizations saying it makes sense and other parts saying we don’t think it makes sense to take any position.”
Apple’s core internal workplace behavior policy reviewed by Reuters added a mention of caste in sections on equal employment opportunity and anti-harassment after September 2020.
“I could imagine parts of … (the) organizations saying it makes sense and other parts saying we don’t think it makes sense to take any position.”
Apple’s core internal workplace behavior policy reviewed by Reuters added a mention of caste in sections on equal employment opportunity and anti-harassment after September 2020.
Apple confirmed that it “updated the wording a couple of years ago to emphasize that we prohibit caste-based discrimination or persecution.” He added that the staff training also explicitly mentions caste.
“Our teams are constantly evaluating our policies, training, processes and resources to ensure they are comprehensive,” the post reads. “We have a diverse and global team and we are proud that our policies and actions reflect this.”
Elsewhere in tech, IBM told Reuters it added caste, which was already in an India-specific policy, to its global discrimination rules after the Cisco lawsuit was filed, although it declined to give a specific date or rationale.
Several companies do not mention caste in their core global policy, including Amazon (AMZN.O), Dell (DELL.N), owner of Facebook Meta (META.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) . . Reuters reviewed each of the policies, some of which are only posted to employees.
All companies told Reuters they have zero tolerance for caste bias, with the exception of Meta, which did not specify that such bias falls under existing prohibitions on discrimination in categories such as ancestry and national origin politics.
Castism is banned in India
Caste discrimination was banned in India over 70 years ago, but bias persists, according to several studies in recent years, including one that found Dalits were underrepresented in high-paying positions. The debate over hierarchy is contentious in India and abroad as the issue is intertwined with religion and some people say that discrimination is now rare.
Government policy to reserve places for lower-caste students at leading Indian universities has helped many find high-tech jobs in the West in recent years.
Reuters spoke to about two dozen Dalit tech workers in the United States who said they were discriminated against abroad. They said caste attributes, including their surnames, hometowns, diets, or religious observances, led to co-workers bypassing them in hiring, promotions, and social activities.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the claims of the workers, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared damaging their careers. Two said they quit their jobs because of what they saw as caste.
“There is severe caste discrimination in the United States,” said Mayuri Raja, a Google software engineer, AWU member and low-caste peer advocate.
More than 1,600 Google employees have demanded that caste be added to a core code of conduct in the workplace around the world in a petition seen by Reuters. They sent an email to CEO Sundar Pichai last month and received no response last week.
Google confirmed to Reuters that caste discrimination falls under discrimination based on nationality, gender and ethnicity. He declined to elaborate on his policies.
“NOT SUITABLE FOR BUSINESS”
The addition of caste to a common code of conduct is not uncommon.
The World Wide Web Consortium, an industry standards body partly based in Massachusetts, introduced it in July 2020. California State University and the state Democratic Party have followed in the past two years.
In May of this year, California’s employment agency, the Department of Civil Rights, added castes to its equal employment opportunity policy for employers.
Still, the move by Apple, the $2.8 trillion giant with more than 165,000 full-time employees worldwide, looks massive.
The iPhone maker’s Fair Employment Policy now states that Apple “does not discriminate in hiring, training, hiring, or promotion based on” 18 categories, including “race, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, religion, creed, age”. plus disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
In contrast, many employers are hesitant to go beyond the laws in their core policies, according to three employment lawyers, including Koray Bulut, a partner at Goodwin Procter.
However, some companies have gone even further with secondary policies that govern limited operations or serve only as general guidelines.
For example, caste is explicit in Dell’s Global Social Media Policy, as well as the Amazon Sustainability Team’s Global Human Rights Principles and Google’s Supplier Code of Conduct.
Amazon and Dell have confirmed that they have also started mentioning castes in anti-bias presentations to at least some new hires outside of India. They declined to state when, why, or how widely they made the addition, though Dell said it made the change after the Cisco lawsuit was filed.
Company presentations include explanations of caste as an undesirable social structure that exists in some parts of the world, according to a Reuters review of some online training, and Dell materials mention a recent “headline” lawsuit.
John-Paul Singh Deol, lead employment attorney at San Francisco’s Dhillon Law Group, said that just including castes in training and guidelines is tantamount to “words” on the matter, as their legal validity is dubious.
This characterization was dismissed by Janine Yancey, CEO of Emtrain, which sells anti-bias training to about 550 employers, and a longtime employment lawyer.
“No company wants to have employee turnover, low productivity and conflict — it’s just bad for business,” she said.
However, the explicit mention of caste is likely to lead to an increase in HR complaints alleging that this is a bias, Yancey added.
“Whenever you’re going to call something specific, you exponentially increase your workload,” she said.
Apple declined to say if any complaints have been filed under the caste clause.
South Carolina law professor Brown does not expect an immediate resolution to the debate over whether companies should refer to caste.
“This is an issue that will ultimately be decided by the courts,” he said. “The area is now unsettled.”
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