Cisco Sued for Discrimination Based on Caste

In an unconventional scenario of discrimination by caste, the condition of California has alleged two managers at Cisco Techniques harassed a fellow Indian-American personnel simply because he comes from the most affordable social group in India’s caste method.

The fit filed on Tuesday by California’s Department of Fair Work and Housing (DFEH) also names Cisco as a defendant, boasting the networking equipment large unsuccessful to reduce the alleged harassment of an engineer recognized only as John Doe or handle the problem of caste-based discrimination in its workforce.

“For many years, identical to Doe’s team, Cisco’s complex workforce has been — and proceeds to be — predominantly South Asian Indian,” the DFEH explained in its grievance, noting that much more than 70% of Cisco’s H1-B visa personnel arrive from India.

U.S. work regulation does not exclusively bar caste-based discrimination but the DFEH contends Cisco subjected Doe to “disparate phrases and circumstances of work based on his faith, ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/coloration.”

“It is unacceptable for place of work circumstances and chances to be decided by a hereditary social status decided by birth,” DFEH Director Kevin Kish explained in a news launch. “Employers have to be geared up to reduce, solution, and deter unlawful carry out from personnel simply because of caste.”

According to the DFEH, Doe was born at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy as a Dalit, when termed “untouchables.” As a principal engineer at Cisco, he has worked with a team of solely Indian staff members, all of whom, other than for him, are from bigger castes.

As beneficiaries of the caste method, Doe’s bigger caste supervisors Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella and co-personnel allegedly “imported the discriminatory system’s methods into their team and Cisco’s place of work.”

“Doe was expected to acknowledge a caste hierarchy inside of the place of work wherever Doe held the most affordable status inside of the team and, as a consequence, gained a lot less shell out, fewer chances, and other inferior phrases and circumstances of work,” the fit says.

The DFEH also claims Doe’s supervisors retaliated from him when he “unexpectedly opposed the unlawful methods, contrary to the regular order concerning the Dalit and bigger castes.”

A 2018 study by the civil rights group Equality Labs identified that 67% of Dalits felt they were handled unfairly at their U.S. workplaces.

caste method, Cisco Techniques, Dalit, work discrimination, Lawsuit