Agency accuses Cisco of racial bias

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is urging Cisco Systems Inc. to settle allegations of racial discrimination against five minority job applicants or else face a lawsuit from the agency.

In rejecting four black applicants and one Asian American applicant, the San Jose-based company “demonstrated an ongoing pattern and practice of not hiring qualified minority candidates based on their race, color and national origin (including Hispanics),” the commission said.

Cisco, the world’s largest networking equipment maker, has disputed the allegations.

The company said Thursday that 43% of its roughly 28,500 U.S. workers identified themselves as ethnic minorities and that minority hiring was growing faster than overall head count growth.

“While we disagree with the allegations in this case, Cisco takes this issue very seriously,” the company said in a statement.

The allegations were included in letters sent to Cisco by the commission and made available by lawyers for four of the five applicants who filed suit against the company in San Francisco federal court in January.

The letters urged Cisco to engage in settlement talks with the commission or risk a lawsuit. The letters did not outline any evidence in support of the agency’s findings.

The commission declined to comment. Should Cisco be taken to court and found in violation, it could be fined a maximum of $300,000 for each aggrieved employee, according to commission spokesman David Grinberg.

The applicants’ suit claims that they were passed over for jobs that were instead given to less-qualified white applicants. The plaintiffs claim that they were denied employment despite scoring higher on an internal Cisco applicant ranking system than those who got jobs.