As Big Tech grapples with caste-based discrimination, Apple explicitly bans it
Enlarge (credit: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / Contributor | AFP via Getty Images)
To help combat caste-based discrimination, the Indian government saves spots at the best Indian universities for lower-caste students, who often take that opportunity and turn it into a tech job in Silicon Valley. In the US, discrimination laws don't specifically protect citizens based on caste, though that is changing. Reuters reports that, out of all the Big Tech companies relying on India's skilled workers, Apple has been most explicit about preventing discrimination by caste among its US employees.
Reported this week for the first time publicly, Apple updated its employee conduct policy in 2020 to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of caste," the same way it prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, and ancestry.
The decision came after the first US employment lawsuit about alleged casteism" was filed in June 2020 by a California employment regulator defending a low-caste engineer working at Cisco Systems. The engineer alleged that two of his Cisco bosses were higher-caste and impeded his advancement opportunities at the tech company.