Amazon, Dell, Meta, Microsoft, and Google do not expressly and explicitly mention caste in their central global policies.
Training employees
Managers and employees in the US would not be familiar with the concept of caste, which is well known in India.
To better understand the new policies, Apple has also started training its workers on the topic.
This policy sits alongside existing codes prohibiting discrimination based on race, religion, gender, age, and ancestry.
The lawsuit against higher caste seniors
Cisco Systems was sued by California’s employment regulator on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste seniors of stalling his career after Apple updated its general employee conduct policy to include caste in June 2020.
It was the first lawsuit filed against alleged casteism in the US and it forced major tech companies to include caste as another basis for discrimination.
Other companies that acknowledge caste
IBM also seemingly updated its policy to include anti-casteism rules and is training its managers on caste.
Under their moderation guidelines, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter offer caste protection.
Users can report a discriminatory tweet or post and select that it was casteist in nature.
Google cancels the talk by Dalit presenter.
Silicon Valley recently came face to face with caste and alleged caste discrimination among tech workers with Indian heritage.
Back in June, Google, whose CEO Sundar Pichai has Indian roots, canceled a talk on caste discrimination where Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was supposed to give a presentation.
Google employee Tanuja Gupta organized the talk.
Hindu majority pushes back.
It eventually emerged that Google canceled the talk because it led to rancor inside the company, with people calling Soundararajan “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu”.
After the cancellation, Tanuja was allegedly investigated for violating the company’s code of conduct.
Harassment campaign
She said that several emails were sent to her VP, the head of HR, the chief diversity officer, and to the CEO directly, claiming that the talk was creating a hostile workplace. Other allegations included making people feel unsafe, that the speaker was not qualified to speak on the topic, and several more. Soon after the incident, she left Google.