Reuters reviewed each of the policies, some of which are only published internally to employees. Several companies do not specifically reference caste in their main global policy, including Amazon, Dell, Facebook owner Meta, Microsoft and Google. IBM's only training that mentions caste is for managers in India, the company added. “We have a diverse and global team, and are proud that our policies and actions reflect that.”Įlsewhere in tech, IBM told Reuters that it added caste, which was already in India-specific policies, to its global discrimination rules after the Cisco lawsuit was filed, though it declined to give a specific date or a rationale. “Our teams assess our policies, training, processes and resources on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are comprehensive,” it said. It added that training provided to staff also explicitly mentions caste. (an) organisation are saying this makes sense, and other parts are saying we don't think taking a stance makes sense.”Īpple's main internal policy on workplace conduct, which was seen by Reuters, added reference to caste in the equal employment opportunity and anti-harassment sections after September 2020.Īpple confirmed that it “updated language a couple of years ago to reinforce that we prohibit discrimination or harassment based on caste”. “I am not surprised that the policies would be inconsistent because that's almost what you would expect when the law is not clear,” said Kevin Brown, a University of South Carolina law professor studying caste issues, citing uncertainty among executives over whether caste would ultimately make it into US statutes. Their efforts have produced patchy results, according to a Reuters review of policy across the US industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers from India. Since the suit was filed, several activist and employee groups have begun seeking updated US discrimination legislation - and have also called on tech companies to change their own policies to help fill the void and deter casteism. The dispute - the first US employment lawsuit about alleged casteism - has forced Big Tech to confront a millennia-old hierarchy where Indians' social position has been based on family lineage, from the top Brahmin “priestly” class to the Dalits, shunned as “untouchables” and consigned to menial labor. This month an appeals panel rejected the networking company's bid to push the case to private arbitration, meaning a public court case could come as early as next year.
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The update came after the tech sector - which counts India as its top source of skilled foreign workers - received a wake-up call in June 2020 when California's employment regulator sued Cisco Systems on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste bosses of blocking his career.Ĭisco, which denies wrongdoing, says an internal probe found no evidence of discrimination and that some of the allegations are baseless because caste is not a legally “protected class” in California.
The inclusion of the new category, which hasn't been previously reported, goes beyond US discrimination laws, which do not explicitly ban casteism. America's tech giants are taking a modern-day crash course in India's ancient caste system, with Apple emerging as an early leader in policies to rid Silicon Valley of a rigid hierarchy that's segregated Indians for generations.Īpple, 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.
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