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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 the new category, which hasn't been previously
reported, goes beyond U.S. discrimination laws, which do not
explicitly ban casteism.
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.
Cisco, 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. 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.
The dispute - the first U.S. 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.
Since the suit was filed, several activist and employee groups
have begun seeking updated U.S. discrimination legislation - and
have also called on tech companies to change their own policies
to help fill the void and deter casteism.
Their efforts have produced patchy results, according to a
Reuters review of policy across the U.S. industry, which employs
hundreds of thousands of workers from India.
"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 U.S.
statutes.
"I could imagine that parts of ... (an) organization are saying
this makes sense, and other parts are saying we don't think
taking a stance makes sense."
Apple'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.
Apple confirmed that it "updated language a couple of years ago
to reinforce that we prohibit discrimination or harassment based
on caste." It added that training provided to staff also
explicitly mentions caste.
"Our teams assess our policies, training, processes and
resources on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are
comprehensive," it said. "We have a diverse and global team, and
are proud that our policies and actions reflect that."
Elsewhere 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.
IBM's only training that mentions caste is for managers in
India, the company added.
Several companies do not specifically reference caste in their
main global policy, including Amazon, Dell, Facebook owner Meta,
Microsoft and Google. Reuters reviewed each of the policies,
some of which are only published internally to employees.
The companies all told Reuters that they have zero tolerance for
caste prejudice and, apart from Meta which did not elaborate,
said such bias would fall under existing bans on discrimination
by categories such as ancestry and national originon policy.
CASTEISM OUTLAWED IN INDIA
Caste discrimination was outlawed in India over 70 years ago,
yet bias persists, according to several studies in recent years,
including one that found Dalit people were underrepresented in
higher-paying jobs. Debate over the hierarchy is contentious in
India and abroad, with the issue intertwined with religion, and
some people saying discrimination is now rare.
Government policies reserving seats for lower-caste students at
top Indian universities have helped many land tech jobs in the
West in recent years.
Reuters spoke to about two dozen Dalit tech workers in the
United States who said discrimination had followed them
overseas. They said that caste cues, including their last names,
hometowns, diets or religious practices, had led to colleagues
bypassing them in hiring, promotions and social activities.
Reuters could not independently verify the allegations of the
workers, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they
feared harming their careers. Two said they had quit their jobs
over what they viewed as casteism.
Some staff groups, including the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) at
Google's parent company, say explicit mention of caste in
corporate rules would open the door to companies investing in
areas such as data collection and training at the same levels as
they do to protect other groups.
"Significant caste discrimination exists in the United States,"
said Mayuri Raja, a Google software engineer who is a member of
the AWU and advocates for lower-caste colleagues.
Over 1,600 Google workers demanded the addition of caste to the
main workplace code of conduct worldwide in a petition, seen by
Reuters, which they emailed to CEO Sundar Pichai last month and
resent last week after no response.
Google reiterated to Reuters that caste discrimination fell
under national origin, ancestry and ethnic discrimination. It
declined to elaborate further on its policies.
'NOT GOOD FOR BUSINESS'
Adding caste to a general code of conduct is not unheard of.
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
over the past two years.
In May this year, California's employment regulator, the Civil
Rights Department, added caste to its example equal employment
opportunity policy for employers.
Yet the move by Apple, a $2.8 trillion behemoth with more than
165,000 full-time employees globally, looms large.
The iPhone maker's fair hiring policy now states that Apple
"does not discriminate in recruiting, training, hiring, or
promoting on the basis of" 18 categories, including "race,
color, ancestry, national origin, caste, religion, creed, age"
plus disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.
By contrast, many employers are hesitant to go beyond laws with
their primary policies, according to three employment attorneys
including Koray Bulut, a partner at Goodwin Procter.
"Most companies simply quote from the federal and state statutes
that list the protected categories," Bulut said.
Some companies have, however, gone further in secondary policies
that govern limited operations or serve only as loose
guidelines.
Caste is explicitly written into Dell's Global Social Media
Policy, for example, and in Amazon sustainability team's Global
Human Rights Principles and Google's code of conduct for
suppliers.
Amazon and Dell confirmed they had also begun mentioning caste
in anti-bias presentations for at least some new hires outside
India. They declined to specify when, why and how broadly they
made the addition, though Dell said it made the change after the
Cisco lawsuit was filed.
The companies' presentations include explanations of caste as an
unwanted social structure that exists in parts of the world,
according to a Reuters review of some of the online training,
with the Dell material referencing a recent lawsuit "from the
headlines."
John-Paul Singh Deol, lead employment attorney at Dhillon Law
Group in San Francisco, said that only including caste in
training and guidelines amounted to "giving lip service" to the
issue because their legal force is questionable.
This characterization was rejected by Janine Yancey, CEO of
Emtrain, which sells anti-bias training to about 550 employers,
and a longtime employment attorney.
"No company wants to have employee turnover, lack of
productivity and conflict - that's just not good for business,"
she said.
Yet explicitly referencing caste would likely invite an
increased number of HR complaints alleging it as a bias, Yancey
added.
"Whenever you're going to call out something specifically,
you're exponentially increasing your caseload," she said.
Apple declined to say whether any complaints had been brought
under its caste provision.
South Carolina law professor Brown expects no immediate
resolution to the debate over of whether companies should
reference caste.
"This is an issue that ultimately will be resolved by the
courts," he said. "The area right now is unsettled."
(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Additional reporting by Kanishka
Singh in Washington and Sudarshan Varadhan in New Delhi; Editing
by Kenneth Li and Pravin Char)
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