Cisco allowed discrimination based on Indian caste, state claims

California’s fair employment regulator is suing San Jose tech giant Cisco, alleging that it allowed senior Indian caste supervisors to discriminate against a caste engineer formerly known as “untouchable.”

The Fair Employment and Housing Department noted in its lawsuit that members of the “Dalit” caste, formerly known as “untouchables,” continue to face discrimination and segregation in India, and the agency alleged that at Cisco, “superior caste supervisors and co-workers imported discriminatory system practices “into the team the engineer worked in. The engineer is anonymously identified as John Doe in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the United States District Court in San Jose, which accuses Cisco violating federal civil rights and state labor laws. The company said in a statement Wednesday that it did not violate any laws.

Doe, like Dalit, is a minority among people of Indian origin working in the U.S., where only 1.5% of Indian immigrants come from lower castes, the agency said in the lawsuit. “The same is true for Indian employees in Cisco’s San Jose workforce,” the agency said.

Doe’s team was made up entirely of employees who migrated to the US as adults from India, all but himself from high castes, the lawsuit alleged. “Doe was expected to accept a caste hierarchy within the workplace where Doe had the lowest status within the team and, as a result, received less pay, fewer opportunities, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment,” the lawsuit stated. “They also hoped it would withstand a hostile work environment.”

A Cisco spokesperson said the company was committed to an inclusive workplace for all employees. “We have robust processes for reporting and investigating concerns raised by employees, which have been followed in this case since 2016, and we have determined that we fully comply with all laws and our own policies,” the spokesperson said in an email. statement on Wednesday. “Cisco will vigorously defend itself against the allegations made in this complaint.”

Doe has more than two decades of experience as a software developer, and was hired in 2015 to work at Cisco’s headquarters in San José, according to the lawsuit. His alleged problems began about a year later, after he learned from two colleagues that the supervisor who had recruited and hired him had told them that Doe was Dalit and that he had been an affirmative action student at the Indian Institute of Technology. India, according to demand. .

Doe, “contrary to traditional order between Dalit and higher castes,” confronted the supervisor, who asked who had claimed to have made the comment, the lawsuit alleged. After Doe told him, the supervisor denied making the comment and said Doe’s colleagues were lying, the lawsuit claimed. Doe then contacted Cisco’s human resources department to file a complaint against the supervisor, according to the lawsuit. Six days later, the supervisor told Doe that he was stripping Doe’s lead role in two projects, the lawsuit alleged. The supervisor also took team members away from another project Doe was working on, according to the lawsuit. The changes led Doe to be “isolated from all his colleagues,” the lawsuit alleged.

After Doe filed a written complaint about the alleged discrimination, Cisco employee relations staff “indicated that caste discrimination was not illegal” and found that Doe’s complaints were unsubstantiated, according to the lawsuit.

The supervisor continued to retaliate against Doe, further isolating him, belittling other workers and falsely alleging that Doe did not do his job properly, the lawsuit alleged.

Doe pressured Cisco to reopen an investigation, and it did, discovering a spreadsheet showing anticipated annual increases, bonuses, and premiums on restricted stock units that the supervisor had promised Doe but “never materialized.” when they got engaged, “the lawsuit stated. Cisco again found that it could not substantiate “any breed-related or Doe-related discrimination or retaliation,” according to the lawsuit.