California sues Cisco for caste-based discrimination against Indian-American employee

The California state government on Tuesday said that it has filed a lawsuit against tech conglomerate Cisco Systems for allegedly discriminating against and harassing an Indian-American employee because of his caste.

The California state government has filed a lawsuit against tech conglomerate Cisco Systems. Photo courtesy: Prayintno on Flickr
The California state government has filed a lawsuit against tech conglomerate Cisco Systems. Photo courtesy: Prayintno on Flickr

According to Reuters, the lawsuit accuses former Cisco managers Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella of promoting caste-based hierarchy within the organisation. While the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing lawsuit did not name the employee, it did say that he has been a principal engineer at Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose since 2015. The department added that the employee belonged to a Dalit family.

The lawsuit alleges that the firm rejected the employee’s raise and denied him a promotion twice.

The state government said in a statement that the employee was deprived of other opportunities at the workplace because of his caste. “The complainant was expected to accept a caste hierarchy within the workplace where he held the lowest status within a team of higher-caste colleagues, receiving less pay, fewer opportunities, and other inferior terms and conditions of employment because of his religion, ancestry, national origin/ethnicity, and race/colour,” the government said.

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CtoI News Desk
CtoI News Desk – CtoI

Singapore-headquartered online media company targeting Indian Diaspora across Singapore, US, UK, India and UAE. Connected to India covers developments around NRIs. Cover arts, political, sports, finance, entrepreneurship, business, movies, dramas, entertainment and other news for Indians living worldwide.

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