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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

At no point do they say "Our company does not and did not allow discrimination against a person for being dalit". That is all they would have to say to take a clear stance- and they don't.

> "Cisco is committed to an inclusive workplace for all," the company said in a statement to online news site thewire.

> "We have robust processes to report and investigate concerns raised by employees which were followed in this case dating back to 2016, and have determined we were fully in compliance with all laws as well as our own policies. Cisco will vigorously defend itself against the allegations made in this complaint." (emphasis mine).

We're inclusive! You can tell, because nothing we did was strictly illegal! And nothing violated any of our policies, which don't cover discrimination by caste!

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Yup. And IIRC caste isn't a protected class in the US, they can completely ignore the problem -- or even actively allow or endorse it! -- and still be "fully in compliance with all laws".

“”” National Origin Discrimination

National origin discrimination involves treating people (applicants or employees) unfavorably because they are from a particular country or part of the world, because of ethnicity or accent, or because they appear to be of a certain ethnic background (even if they are not). National origin discrimination also can involve treating people unfavorably because they are married to (or associated with) a person of a certain national origin. Discrimination can occur when the victim and the person who inflicted the discrimination are the same national origin. “””

That’s the definition given by the EEOC. I wasn’t sure either, but reading that it leans me towards it being illegal. California is also currently suing Cisco, saying they allowed caste discrimination by a manager. AIUI their defense is that they investigated and were unable to corroborate those allegations, which they presumably wouldn’t do if they considered caste-based discrimination legal.

They don't say it because it is a legal matter and it would be stupid to make a statement about it to the media.

If you’re commenting to the media, it’s beyond a legal matter.

Some of the people replying are reacting as if the fact that there is no law making this particular discrimination illegal means the company's hands were tied. California is an at-will state, the company could have done literally anything it wanted to.

Cisco is also the company that tried to pitch building the 'great firewall' for the CCP: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html

They don't care about right or wrong, they only care about making the most money they can while staying within the technical legal constraints of the countries they operate in.

I doubt they'd stop at workplace discrimination, if the CCP or Indian government wanted to leverage their tech to kill people (Dalit or Uighur) I'm sure they'd line up to do it (of course they’d rationalize some reason why it wasn’t their problem).

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