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California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

reuters.com

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Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#21

Post by trhway »

hlieberman wrote: post #4
duxup wrote: post #3

>At Cisco, the unnamed employee reported Iyer to human resources in November 2016 for outing him as a Dalit to colleagues. Iyer allegedly retaliated, but Cisco determined caste discrimination was not illegal and issues continued through 2018, the lawsuit states. I wouldn't expect HR to side with the lower level employee as generally HR groups are there to protect the company.... but I would wonder what their findings…

This is the buried lede in the article: they didn't deny the allegations, simply determined that it wasn't illegal (!)

>simply determined that it wasn't illegal (!)

juxtaposing with

>Cisco’s workforce includes thousands of Indian immigrants, most of whom were born Brahmins or other high castes.

well, wolves determined that eating lambs is ok :)

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#22

Post by dcolkitt »

js8 wrote: post #9

Maybe somebody can clarify this for me. It seems that there is a difference in American and European laws about discrimination, where U.S. has a concept of protected groups (i.e. they explicitly enumerate who is not to be discriminated), while EU has laws based on equality of the groups (or more generally, humans). It seems to me that the American system is more antagonistic, in the sense it really prefers some group…

One underlying difference is that the US has at-will employment. Meaning an employer can terminate employee for any reason, except specific no-no reasons.

In the US, it's perfectly legal to fire someone, just cause you think their haircut is stupid, they stole your girlfriend, they root for a sports team you don't like, or you just plain don't like them.

I don't want to over-generalize, because Europe is a collection of many different legal systems, but in general European employees can only be fired for just cause. That is instead of listing why you can't fire someone, they enumerate specific reasons you can terminate an employee.

Therefore to protect against discrimination, the American system requires listing protected classes. The European system does not, because they simply omit "discrimination" from the list of acceptable just causes for termination. However in the US discrimination, i.e. employment termination for reasons unrelated to job performance, is perfectly legal. As long as it doesn't coincide with officially prohibited types of discrimination. Discriminating against employees on the basis of race, sex, or religion is a big problem. Discriminating on the basis of sports fandom, haircut or taste in music is perfectly legal.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#23

Post by virtuous_signal »

yalogin wrote: post #18

> Like other large Silicon Valley employers, Cisco’s workforce includes thousands of Indian immigrants, most of whom were born Brahmins or other high castes. This seems too important to just throw in unsubstantiated. I have never seen this kind of statistic.

One could probably extrapolate from the statistic mentioned in the article (below). It seems plausible that the US visa system ends up taking in more people of high castes.

>In 2003, only 1.5 percent of Indian immigrants in the United States were Dalits or members of lower castes, according to the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. More than 90 percent were from high or dominant castes. About 2.5 million people of Indian descent live in the country, including those born here.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#24

Post by systemvoltage »

29athrowaway wrote: post #14
systemvoltage wrote: post #8

I don’t understand. If “caste” is something specific to country of India, and if it is not explicitly listed in US law; can the defendant just claim it to be a more generalized version discrimination? It’s like going to a barber shop and they won’t cut your hair because they discriminate based on your accent. It’s discrimination regardless even though it’s not explicitly listed in the law. As far as the US law is con…

I guess this would be a form of religious discrimination, because it's discrimination based on religious beliefs.

That makes sense. I am curious how would the court respond to discrimination based on, say, tattoos on their forehead? Extreme example to make a point.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#25

Post by comex »

systemvoltage wrote: post #8

I don’t understand. If “caste” is something specific to country of India, and if it is not explicitly listed in US law; can the defendant just claim it to be a more generalized version discrimination? It’s like going to a barber shop and they won’t cut your hair because they discriminate based on your accent. It’s discrimination regardless even though it’s not explicitly listed in the law. As far as the US law is con…

US laws typically don’t have a blanket ban on “discrimination” in general, but rather ban discrimination based on explicitly listed characteristics. In this case, they’re accusing Cisco of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin”.

So you’re actually fully allowed to discriminate based on the color of someone’s clothes, although probably not accent since it could be considered a proxy for race or national origin.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#26

Post by rudiv »

yalogin wrote: post #18

> Like other large Silicon Valley employers, Cisco’s workforce includes thousands of Indian immigrants, most of whom were born Brahmins or other high castes. This seems too important to just throw in unsubstantiated. I have never seen this kind of statistic.

It may be surprising or disconcerting to you, but it is an assumption that is usually borne out - I don't have figures for you, so I can't speak to this specific case. It is well documented that access to education, wealth, and most other factors that determine whether an Indian can emigrate to America for a highly-skilled job are extremely skewed in favour of the forward castes.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#27

Post by yedava »

usaar333 wrote: post #10

> lawsuit found that 67% of Dalits surveyed felt treated unfairly at their U.S. workplaces. I'm more surprised 67% of Dalits would have coworkers knowing their caste. Can someone give context on how this happens?

Caste is not just some arbitrary marker. It dictates quiet a few things in your life - like what dialect you speak, your diet, who you marry, which part of the city/town/village you hail from, and even your politics. So for an Indian, identifying someone's caste is pretty easy.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#28

Post by ViViDboarder »

hlieberman wrote: post #4
duxup wrote: post #3

>At Cisco, the unnamed employee reported Iyer to human resources in November 2016 for outing him as a Dalit to colleagues. Iyer allegedly retaliated, but Cisco determined caste discrimination was not illegal and issues continued through 2018, the lawsuit states. I wouldn't expect HR to side with the lower level employee as generally HR groups are there to protect the company.... but I would wonder what their findings…

This is the buried lede in the article: they didn't deny the allegations, simply determined that it wasn't illegal (!)

Well, retaliation is illegal even if they believed the initial complained wasn’t illegal. Of course, discrimination is bad for businesses and they should have taken action against the managers anyway.

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#29

Post by tathougies »

justaguy88 wrote: post #17
tathougies wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the EU law? If a man applied to be a girl's PE teacher that would be in a locker room, is that allowed? Certainly not, right? The US allows discrimination in general as long as it's not based on membership in certain groups, unless such membership is germaine to the job. So you could limit gender in my PE teacher example, but you can't for a crossing guard (because presumably, anyone can be a crossing…

Why would any PE teacher enter the locker room, that seems odd regardless of gender.

That was my attempt at a good example. Certainly you must admit there are occupations where gender matters? Like prison guard?

Re: California accuses Cisco of job discrimination based on Indian employee's caste

#30

Post by ViViDboarder »

duxup wrote: post #3

>At Cisco, the unnamed employee reported Iyer to human resources in November 2016 for outing him as a Dalit to colleagues. Iyer allegedly retaliated, but Cisco determined caste discrimination was not illegal and issues continued through 2018, the lawsuit states. I wouldn't expect HR to side with the lower level employee as generally HR groups are there to protect the company.... but I would wonder what their findings…

This didn’t protect the company very well... someone in HR ought to catch the flack on this too.

Discrimination is bad for businesses. Not just if it hits the press, but those employees being discriminated against aren’t going to be as productive as those being encouraged. Fire bad managers. HR works for the company, not middle management.

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