Oracle Global Reponsability - Let's build a real momentum

Oracle Earth week Celebration, with many volunteers in action for a better world is also an opportunity to request more from the company best assets - to make a better world.

CFDT, CGC, CGT, Oracle Labor Unions requestsworldwide free licencing of the Oracle software towards the healthcare non-profit organisations.

Why not offering the best software to save life or prevent people from beeing harmed ?

Health care institutions, Genetic diseases foundations deserves more empowerment from Oracle than just encouraging employees to take on their personal time to take telethon phone calls once a year.

We feel that the public sector and the non profit organisation could benefit the scalability, parallelisation capabilities, analytical datamining features of Oracle Software - For the best of mankind, and the honor of the company.

Let's remind that Oracle had a non GAAP Operating Margin of 44%, reaching 3.9 Billion dollars for a single last quarter.

The France Consulting Bonus Story

Lots of consulting contacts take any opportunity to express their interest regarding the France Consulting bonus "illegal" aspects. As a matter of facts, France has been excluded from Consulting, ACS, Education, Support bonus pools.
There has never been in the past problems with bonus as long as compensation distribution rules are clearly communicated. This has clearly not been the case in many teams, where bonuses were unevenly distributed, and where good performers with high utilisation rates could get nothing !
We also had a clear issue with female salary recognition regarding bonus.

This "unfair" treatment is the main illegal point which could have been easily corrected by entering into a description of rules on how to get a bonus on an individual basis.
Management refused to enter such a regulation, willing to keep the capability to change the rules, and distribute whatever they wanted to whoever without explainations.

This clearly was unacceptable as excellence must be shown and explainable. We would not support non explainable recognition. We contest the fact that bonus is deployed to reward performance, at least through some terminal management channels in France.

Therefore HR entered into an agreement with the labor unions to partially integrate the bonus rights within the base salary. And we still request for shared success recognition through SMART explainable goals to each individuals;

We shall see if attrition rates attracts more attention on finding the way for a better way of managing motivation and keeping the wheel of success running - Even in France.

Merger Hard facts - The job mapping process

Oracle Merger procedures can be quite rude and especially conservative when considering the target job code of a former employee. Like Siebel or Peoplesoft employees in the past, Sun people can legitimely ask the question on the hard facts dictating their final Oracle Grading.

We should expect IC3, IC4 population dispersion curves to be about the same between former Sun Employees and Oracle ones. However, the French works council analysis, during the merger consultation procedures showed a discrepency around the Sun level 9 grading, initially planned towards IC3 level, but replanned to IC4 in France.

It seems that other countries conducted subsequent mass remapping on a team per team basis, based on the approval cases built by management. It is still time to ask for clarification and, if justified, mass corrective actions can be approved by management.

If you feel undermapped - It is not to late to ask for a fair treatment to your management or through your workers representatives.

Don't hesitate to post comments on the link below.

EWC Annual Meeting March 16th

The company will hold its European Works Council this week in Reading. We all expect to have a good understanding on employment perspectives and salary strategy, as more and more people especially in sales and consulting take the opportunity to leave following the economy recovery.

We can already figure out the employment numbers through those internal sheets.

(Upd March 24) The official Communiqué is under EMEA Management Review.

Oracle Support - Facing the hard facts

Revenue and margin cannot just go down with less people and less service provided to customers.

Can it ?

With the egyptian revolution messing up 2 thirds of some support European teams, times are really painful for our "Old Europe" collegues.

One of them submitted the the following Article from SearchOracle.Com.

Good reading

The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems

Have a look - Courtesy of Infoworld.
"Memorial Slideshow for a former Titan..."

European Works Council Statement

You may be interested in the following statement from the last European Works Council (Oracle Internal Network) regarding Oracle staff reduction plan for FY11.

Oracle Encourage open, honest dialog

But how can we conduct such an open dialog when employees can be so easily dismissed ?
We do ask for a world wide employee forum to bring this honest dialog to the management.

Impossible ? Have a look to Orange Telecom Global Works Council (GWC)

Oracle Board Opposes Sustainability Proposal

Behind the scene, marketing stuff, green washing, the hard facts are very clear about Oracle's commitments regarding environmental responsability. Positive action is hardly ever taken, and there is still very few information regarding Oracle CO2 emissions and compensations.

The internal green programs seem to be there just as a tick-box for the responsability annual report, and would definitly benefit a more ambitious developpement under direct Board Control.

Corporate guidance is mandatory to move on, but we face a no-way.

Read Full Article : Environnemental Leader
Read more : BusinessGreen Blog,

Thanks to Larry, Charles, Mark, Charles and the 5 other Managers for my 71 E purchase order

No comment.

Mark Hurd to join - Charles Philipps Leaving

The news is official now - Marc Hurd is joining Oracle and Charles Phillips leaving.

This draws new perspectives both on the Hardware battlefield and the internal social field as Hurd is known as a very serious fellow.

Read more : HP most precious trade secrets in Peril., Oracle Response like a war is started with HP, Arguments for discontinuing the partnership.

Register for this blog RSS feed, or directly get email blog update

Playing with taxes...

As shown in Oracle 10K FY10, Oracle is still decreasing its overall Tax Income provisions going from 2313 M$ in FY08, 2241 in FY09, to 2108 M$ in FY10.
In the same period, the operating income jumped from 7844 to 9062 M$ !

Despite multiple litigations on this subject, Oracle managed again an incredible performance in tax savings.

The word "Tax" is written more than 300 times in the document. It is showing the impressive amount of energy invested in Tax optimisations. Tense negociations are held worldwide with various Tax autorities, and Oracle systems, Offshore Islands screens are definitly not making the game easier for local gouvernement control.

A few quotes :

[...]our ability to repatriate funds held by our foreign subsidiaries to the United States at favorable tax
rates;

Changes in tax laws or tax rulings may have a significantly adverse impact on our effective tax rate. For
example, proposals for fundamental U.S. international tax reform, such as certain proposals by President Obama’s Administration, if enacted, could have a significant adverse impact on our effective tax rate.

[...] We previously negotiated three successive unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements with the IRS that cover many of our intercompany transfer pricing issues and preclude the IRS from making a transfer pricing adjustment within the scope of the agreements. These agreements are effective for fiscal years through May 31, 2006. We have submitted to the IRS a request for another renewal of this Advance Pricing Agreement for the years ending May 31, 2007 through May 31, 2011. However, these agreements do not cover all elements of our transfer pricing and do not bind tax authorities outside the United States.

This month, Oracle France will have to pay tens of million Euros in settlement of a dispute with the French Tax ministry. Always the question of transfer prices.
Ten Million Euros will also benefit Oracle French Employees, through a mandatory rule called "Employee Participation".
A small victory on the very very long road for more progressive and equitable taxation - who needs to be cared about : simple citizens, small companies, or huge corporations ?

To be continued - Tax Justice Network.

13 Zero Salary review countries

As the Compensation Workbench application is going online, you may be interested to read through the manager training guidelines that 13 countries are banned from the application and not available within the HR database.

This non confidential document states "Zero Budget Countries: Brazil, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland. These employees are not populated in the module."

A Clear signal from the Corporation for countries considered with too many employees ?
But will the employees staying be the most talented ones ?

Read More : FY10 Eligibility Guidelines, Oracle Compensation Philosophy, HR VP interview 2004 (Old Memories),

Register for this blog feed

You can Either subscribe to the blog feed in RSS here or receive emails update

Email Address:

Powered by Feed My Inbox

Oracle sued for alleged fraud against US gov

Well, we had lots of concerns regarding the compliance and ethics code.
Seems we have our confirmation about the serious doubts of having real ethics or just just marketing sheets.

The complaint against Oracle was originally filed by an Oracle employee, who alleged that large discounts offered to other customers were hidden from government agencies.

Has there been any whisleblowing process ?
The inquiry will undoubtly give some informations.
Let's remind that a previous case was settled in 2006 over a 98 Millions USD deal, where the external whisleblower got 17 Millions USD through the false claim act...

And would'nt you want more clarity regarding haven islands Oracle operations ?
Wouldn't a false claim act be of interest - Contact Us.

Register to Our RSS Feed
Read more : The register,

Fusion Storm Rising...

SEC has been advised that Oracle Corp approved, committed and initiated and amendment to the Sun integration plan, with 675 to 825 M$ .

"Amendment further reduces the size of Oracle’s combined workforce primarily in Europe and Asia, eliminates redundant costs resulting from the acquisition of Sun and reflects improved efficiencies in operations."

This annoucement is a serious issue as there has been no local nor Europeen Work's Council consultation.

Read more: Oracle cutting deeper at Sun Microsystems - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

Let's sacrifice some revenue...

.. for more margin.

I strongly recommand this informationweek article, dedicated to IBM, which so much explains our multinational companies behaviours.
Regarding Oracle, we could extrapolate towards :
- Kill/Purchase competitors... for less competition
- Kill consulting for less revenue reckon problems
- Continue Western countries employees layoff until significant hit on margin.

SAP to open a new front...

The announcement of Sybase beeing bought by SAP is an important move, opening the competition play in both the Apps and the Database market.
The purchase of Sybase is the fifth-largest software takeover ever, according to Bloomberg data

Read more : Business Week

Sun France Sales On Strike

This is yet quite an unusual event in our companies, but the Change In Control process really triggered anger from sales force. The sudden change in engagement procedures, sales conditions, especially the support sales ones, severly jammed the "happy merge momentum".

Oracle/Sun Management is asked to provide urgent answers to have the sales force back on line, fully engaged to fullfill their objectives without restraints.

World's second most admired company ?

For your information, an interesting comment sent to Fortune Magazine by one Oracle employee...
TO FORTUNE MAGAZINE

I looked at two of your most recent research findings and was surprised, even shocked by an inconsistency. In your list of the World’s Most Admired Companies, in the sub-list by industry Oracle appears as number 2, behind Adobe (they are both put under “Software”.) And Apple (which appears in a different category, “Hardware”) is number 1. Any casual reader would think that the two companies are almost equally “admirable.” But as anybody with any knowledge of the high-tech industry knows these two companies are as different as day and night. Apple succeeded because it has loyal customers and great products, whereas Oracle, famous for its buggy products and long-suffering customers, is doing great only because it has killed all the competition. Unable to best his competitors, Ellison has been buying them one after the other (PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA etc.) so that now a company that wants a database system with a business software on top has only one choice: Oracle. That is hardly a mark of excellence, just of a predator winning in the business jungle with anti-trust bodies abdicating their responsibilities
So, please, don't compare Apple and Oracle, you are really mixing apples with ...bad apples.

Your methodology of basing such findings on just results and relying on fellow executives is at best disingenuous, at worst pernicious: if to be admired you only look at how profitable a business is, then you should have the Mafia on top of the list, since it’s by far the most profitable business in the world (and shares many management traits with Oracle, by the way.) My point is actually made by none other than yourselves in your list of the Best Companies to Work for. Here, since the results are based on employee surveys, Oracle is nowhere to be seen and justly so: it is (in)famous throughout the industry for the horrendous way it treats its employees. Maybe you should point out that being the most admired company is NOT synonymous with a Best Company to Work for as evidenced by the Oracle case