by KATY CHANG

July 19, 2019

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A 45-year-old Korean man has filed a discrimination lawsuit against chip manufacturer Intel claiming his Indian bosses were racially biased. Hoseong Ryu said that the discrimination started while he was interviewing for the job, reports The Mercury News. The suit filed in the Northern California U.S District Courts said that during his job interview in 2014, where he was interviewed by a three-man panel, one of the interviewers, an Indian man from India allegedly asked him, “I see you are from Korea. I know a Korean man named Sung Won Bin. Do you happen to know him?”

The suit claims that after the interview, the man told a fellow interviewer to not hire Ryu because he was “Korean, married, and had a child.” The man, instead recommended that “It would be easier to hire a younger, unmarried Indian man.”

According to the suit, Ryu, nevertheless, was hired to the system integration team at Intel, but he found “the demographics of the worksite and its management have been heavily skewed toward employees from India or people of Indian or south-Asian descent.”

Additionally, the suit claims that a manger from India “openly favored the hiring and promotion of only employees from India.” The reason being that “Indians are hard workers” and that “Indians work hard.”

Furthermore, Hoseong Ryu, claimed that he was overlooked for a promotion in favor of an Indian. According to the suit, in 2018, a new chief of the system integration was to be appointed. He thought he was in line for the position because he was the de facto manager of the team for 18 months. However, the position went to a person from India who was a system debugger with “no management experience and had significantly less experience with system integration than Ryu,” according to the lawsuit.

The bias also favored Indians in the length of vacations. According to the suit, “Most employees who are not Indian or south-Asian receive only two to three weeks of vacation or leave per year. But employees who are originally from India or of Indian descent typically receive additional leave time and sometimes receive as much as five or six weeks of leave per year.”

An Intel spokesperson, Patricia Oliverio-Lauderdale did not get into the specifics of the lawsuit, but said, “We believe diverse teams with different perspectives, experiences and ideas are more creative and innovative, resulting in a collaborative and supportive environment.”

Hoseong Ryu said that he suffered emotional distress from the racial discrimination on the basis of national origin at Intel. He also said that his reputation was damaged. Ryu is seeking unspecified damages.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4306760&forum_id=2#38561707)