Tech giant Apple has banned caste-based discrimination in the company. The company has issued a code of conduct for employees in the United States.
The company has also started training on this so that its employees understand the new policies better. The new policy sits alongside existing codes that strictly prohibit discrimination against race, religion, gender, age, and ancestry.
Apple updated its general employee conduct policy about two years ago to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on caste.
Apple claimed it “updated language a couple of years ago to reinforce” and prohibit “discrimination or harassment based on caste.” Indians account for Apple’s top foreign workers.
As per the company, it updated the policy two years ago in June 2020 when California’s employment regulator sued Cisco Systems on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste seniors of blocking his career.
The incident was viewed as the first US employment lawsuit about alleged casteism and it forced major tech players to confront reality, which is seemingly going outside Indian borders.
Apple’s workforce also has a large number of Indians. The company reportedly confirmed updating the policy to the publication.
The Cupertino-based tech giant also said, “We have a diverse and global team and are proud that our policies and actions reflect that.”
Apple’s hiring policy now states that the company does not discriminate in recruiting, training, hiring, or promoting on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, national origin, caste, religion, creed, age, including disability, sexual orientation, and gender. The policy has eighteen categories.
Apart from Apple, IBM also seemingly updated its policy to include anti-caste rules. Most tech giants have elaborate anti-discriminatory work policies, but unlike some topics — say as race — they do not explicitly call out caste-based discrimination. IBM is only training its managers on the topic of caste.
Reports have also claimed that Google employees have sent a petition to CEO Sundar Pichai to include casteism in the code of conduct rules in the worldwide list.
