7 ms·

Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pu

Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. It would have been dealt with sooner if the employee was white because (assuming they meant white as in western white skinned person) culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on, and they could have acted based on the other groups listed in the anti-discrimination language. I think it's good they found a way to go forward with dealing with the manager and compensated the employees. In a visit to India a few years ago I saw a shopkeeper make someone leave the store because of caste, not sure if there are actual laws/regulations about this in place there to simplify the process of handling discrimination. The issue of discrimination is very easy to find anywhere, though, and most often presents in a subtle form of prejudice because many people feel a certain way toward others in another group. Anywhere there aren't enforced laws with legal language that protects a group there will be difficulty dealing with discriminatory practices against said group, because laws have to be specific in the way they are written to allow for their enforcement being simple/easy.

adamsmith143 4y ago
> Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. How? Do you really think their language specified that discrimination could only happen from white people to minorities?
- richiebful1 4y ago
  My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    Ok are there also specific legal protections for Eye color, Hair Color, presence of Freckles, etc? Does every possible way to discriminate need to be clearly spelled out for it to be illegal?
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      No, there are not. (In the USA) You are legally allowed to discriminate based on non-protected classes as long as the non-protected class is not being used as a proxy for a protected class.
      - biztos 4y ago
        I was trying to find out if you could really discriminate based on freckliness and before my attention span terminated I found this interesting list: https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/employment-discrimination.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/employmen... [Edit/spoiler: does not cover freckles!]
    - pc86 4y ago
      Your question seems to stem from the belief that discrimination is illegal, which it is not. Discrimination is completely legal, including in hiring practices, as long as you're not discriminating against a protected class (either directly or by proxy). That's why the classes are explicitly enumerated, because if it's not in that list you can discriminate based on it. If you want to open a shop and put a sign out that says "No customers with blue eyes permitted" you're completely within your right to do so. But let's say you discriminated against some other form of eyes, that maybe disproportionately affected groups of a particular race or national origin, that would be illegal.
      - jefftk 4y ago
        Quibbling with your hypothetical: blue eyes are disproportionately possessed by people of a particular race
- saalweachter 4y ago
  I'm guessing they weren't sure whether caste was a protected class. Discrimination in law revolves around protected classes (race, religion, national origin, age and sex are the "big five" in the US, and subsequent acts and decisions have added sexual orientation/gender identity, familial status, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and genetic information). If you act on the basis of that, someone can, well, make a federal case out of it. On the other hand, if you discriminated on the basis of eye color -- pretending for a moment it wasn't correlated with race -- you might be a shitty manager, but it wouldn't be a legal issue.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?
    - elteto 4y ago
      It’s not that it is or it isn’t. The US legal system is based on precedent so if there’s little history of previous cases where this was decided then it’s very hard to know how it will go in court. Everyone loves citing precedent but nobody wants to be the first one to try and set it.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      It might be! I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry. It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.
      - ummonk 4y ago
        Yeah it sounds like legal saw it as cut and dry at least that he could be fired (and possibly that they also had a requirement to do so), while HR folks were making nonsensical arguments of the kind we're seeing here from non-lawyers.
- duped 4y ago
  It's an open legal question for state and federal courts today, so it makes sense companies are struggling with it. The legal language is ambiguous at best, and corporate lawyers/HR exist to mitigate exposure and not take a moral high ground. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/u-s-civil-rights-agency-urged-to-recognize-caste-discrimination https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/u-s-civil-r...
- Bolkan 4y ago
  Both the manager and the victim were part of the same minority as far as the law was concerned. /IANAL
lxxxvi 4y ago
> culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on Sure there is. People from English-speaking countries & Western Europeans vs "Eastern Europeans" and Latinos. Ignoring for a moment that using the term "Eastern Europe" is itself hugely problematic, though usually because of ignorance not racism, I have worked in one and heard of several examples where there were huge discrepancies in salaries (much more than CoL-related), raises, promotions etc. between native English speakers and people from the CEE region. There's absolutely a "caste" system among white people in tech. North Americans, UK, NZ, and AUS first, western Europe second, everyone else fifth.
- user_named 4y ago
  At least the north Americans think so.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least. Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin. Southern Europe perhaps, but that isn't really meant too seriously and more referring to fiscal policies. Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more. I doubt this is comparable to castes in these cases.
  - lxxxvi 4y ago
    > I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least Brexit literally happened because of among other reasons too many "Eastern Europeans". Germans have zero qualms about using phrases like "Barely stolen, already in Poland"... > Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin If you can give me a concise definition of "Eastern Europe" that doesn't have a bunch of asterisks and doesn't use effectively colonial groupings (i.e. when the USSR occupied/puppeted countries usually considered EE) I'll concede this one. But I doubt that you can give me such a definition. > Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more. I know how capitalism works. But when you see someone with 10 years of experience quit because they couldn't get beyond $x regardless of what they did and how much they asked for more get replaced with someone with 3 years of experience making 150% of x for 50% of the same job... The difference being the former was Polish and the latter an American living in Romania (i.e. with an even lower CoL than Poland)... Does it seem incredible, considering companies should optimize for profit? Absolutely. But I've seen it happen with my own eyes and I've seen the work of both.

adamsmith143 4y ago

> Most likely they struggled because the legal language in policies was ambiguous on how to handle the situation, therefore opening the room for the manager to pursue action against the company for consequences for their behavior. How? Do you really think their language specified that discrimination could only happen from white people to minorities?

richiebful1 4y ago
My understanding of the situation is that Western countries/companies don't usually have protected class status on basis of caste. Those protections exist for race, gender, age etc.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Ok are there also specific legal protections for Eye color, Hair Color, presence of Freckles, etc? Does every possible way to discriminate need to be clearly spelled out for it to be illegal?
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    No, there are not. (In the USA) You are legally allowed to discriminate based on non-protected classes as long as the non-protected class is not being used as a proxy for a protected class.
    - biztos 4y ago
      I was trying to find out if you could really discriminate based on freckliness and before my attention span terminated I found this interesting list: https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/employment-discrimination.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/employmen... [Edit/spoiler: does not cover freckles!]
  - pc86 4y ago
    Your question seems to stem from the belief that discrimination is illegal, which it is not. Discrimination is completely legal, including in hiring practices, as long as you're not discriminating against a protected class (either directly or by proxy). That's why the classes are explicitly enumerated, because if it's not in that list you can discriminate based on it. If you want to open a shop and put a sign out that says "No customers with blue eyes permitted" you're completely within your right to do so. But let's say you discriminated against some other form of eyes, that maybe disproportionately affected groups of a particular race or national origin, that would be illegal.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      Quibbling with your hypothetical: blue eyes are disproportionately possessed by people of a particular race
saalweachter 4y ago
I'm guessing they weren't sure whether caste was a protected class. Discrimination in law revolves around protected classes (race, religion, national origin, age and sex are the "big five" in the US, and subsequent acts and decisions have added sexual orientation/gender identity, familial status, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and genetic information). If you act on the basis of that, someone can, well, make a federal case out of it. On the other hand, if you discriminated on the basis of eye color -- pretending for a moment it wasn't correlated with race -- you might be a shitty manager, but it wouldn't be a legal issue.
- abduhl 4y ago
  Why is caste not a subset of national origin or race? Do Indians who discriminate on the basis of caste also discriminate against non-Indians of a lower caste, or is it solely confined to other Indians? If not directly a protected class, why would this not clearly be a disparate impact type of case?
  - elteto 4y ago
    It’s not that it is or it isn’t. The US legal system is based on precedent so if there’s little history of previous cases where this was decided then it’s very hard to know how it will go in court. Everyone loves citing precedent but nobody wants to be the first one to try and set it.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    It might be! I'm not a lawyer, and have no idea if there is already precedent in the US specifically regarding castes, but there is a motion that national origin covers ancestry. It's entirely possible that the legal department in the story above thought it was a cut and dry case and that's why they pushed hard to shut it down before it became one.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      Yeah it sounds like legal saw it as cut and dry at least that he could be fired (and possibly that they also had a requirement to do so), while HR folks were making nonsensical arguments of the kind we're seeing here from non-lawyers.
duped 4y ago
It's an open legal question for state and federal courts today, so it makes sense companies are struggling with it. The legal language is ambiguous at best, and corporate lawyers/HR exist to mitigate exposure and not take a moral high ground. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/u-s-civil-rights-agency-urged-to-recognize-caste-discrimination https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/u-s-civil-r...
Bolkan 4y ago
Both the manager and the victim were part of the same minority as far as the law was concerned. /IANAL

lxxxvi 4y ago

> culturally there isn't an equivalent of caste that would make sense for a white person to act on Sure there is. People from English-speaking countries & Western Europeans vs "Eastern Europeans" and Latinos. Ignoring for a moment that using the term "Eastern Europe" is itself hugely problematic, though usually because of ignorance not racism, I have worked in one and heard of several examples where there were huge discrepancies in salaries (much more than CoL-related), raises, promotions etc. between native English speakers and people from the CEE region. There's absolutely a "caste" system among white people in tech. North Americans, UK, NZ, and AUS first, western Europe second, everyone else fifth.

user_named 4y ago
At least the north Americans think so.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least. Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin. Southern Europe perhaps, but that isn't really meant too seriously and more referring to fiscal policies. Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more. I doubt this is comparable to castes in these cases.
- lxxxvi 4y ago
  > I cannot really confirm that within Europe where I live at least Brexit literally happened because of among other reasons too many "Eastern Europeans". Germans have zero qualms about using phrases like "Barely stolen, already in Poland"... > Using Eastern Europe isn't problematic either. It doesn't have negative connotations where I live, it simply refers to the country of origin If you can give me a concise definition of "Eastern Europe" that doesn't have a bunch of asterisks and doesn't use effectively colonial groupings (i.e. when the USSR occupied/puppeted countries usually considered EE) I'll concede this one. But I doubt that you can give me such a definition. > Companies pay their workers the lowest wage they can get away with. In some regions the wage level is smaller so people tend to accept lower wages. Unfair of course if they live and work in the same place but also not really discrimination. They have to demand more. I know how capitalism works. But when you see someone with 10 years of experience quit because they couldn't get beyond $x regardless of what they did and how much they asked for more get replaced with someone with 3 years of experience making 150% of x for 50% of the same job... The difference being the former was Polish and the latter an American living in Romania (i.e. with an even lower CoL than Poland)... Does it seem incredible, considering companies should optimize for profit? Absolutely. But I've seen it happen with my own eyes and I've seen the work of both.