Beeing Fair - Oracle Ethics

Oracle Ethic duties are enforced in many levels, and we all periodically receive the "training refresh" workflow reminders. These duties have already led to employee dismissals.

However you need to be aware that Oracle Corporation is leading many Oracle Holdings in Cayman islands, Mauritus, Luxembourg.

Why would such dark accounting subs be of any interest for a bright Sarbanes Oxley compliant company ?

Layoff times are a crude reality.
The whole of Europe and the CFDT labor union are very dubious about those subs, in a time where highest morale is due to be held worldwide.
We cannot let money flows run lonely without any accountability nor employee nor governemental control.

We encourage every employee and employee rep to enquire for a clear undestanding of those haven holdings activities.

BEA CrossGain International		Cayman Islands
BEA International		Cayman Islands
Oracle International Holding Company		Cayman Islands
PeopleSoft C.I. Holdings Ltd.		Cayman Islands
SPL WorldGroup International Ltd.		Cayman Islands

Oracle Holding Antilles NV
Oracle Global Mauritus Ltd.

Please report any misconduct or ethics violation to our collective for a transparent employee driven investigation - Contact us :


The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act
SEC Report (free account needed), Commercial Ethics Guide, FR Alter Eco CAC40 and offshore islands,
World Bank Policy, The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act

500 + comments on oracle layoff blog

You will find interesting informations on Oracle Layoffs blog, reaching 300 comments world wide.

A few ones below, to give you the opportunity for further reading.

#30 I was let go today, 9 years with the company and countless awards for utilizations and leadership roles in major high profile projects.

#42 Very cheap on severance package: One month for the first year you serve at Oracle and one week for each additional year you serve. 30 days Oracle covered COBRA. Brutal.

#47 Hey #42. Thats a better severance than in the past it used to be 2 weeks for the first year and 1 week for each subsequent year. Larry musta been feeling generous.

#65 I was a bea acquisition employee and we get the bea acquisition package which is 3 months severance, 3 months cobra. The regular package for non-bea oracle employees is 2 weeks for each year of employment, 30 days cobra. (which really sucks for a large company. I am glad I got the bea package) Each large acquisition (peoplesoft, etc) may have a separate type of package that was part of the acquisition agreement.

#74 Re #70, no email just a call from your manager and a Fedex package by noon in the US.

#90 I am on vacation and was on vacation when US layoffs happened. I haven’t got any email from my manager abt layoff. I am wondering abt the process they follow to lay off an employee who is on vacation.

#231 Listen, if you are on a PIP you are history. Been there, done that, put on a PIP ahead of a merger for no reason at all, adhered to the PIP, and was still terminated.

A PIP these days is akin to a shot across the bow of your battleship. They are trying to give you time to get yourself lost from their sandbox. I would take advantage of it.
Never seen a single person who lived to tell about how ‘I was once on a PIP here’.
Sad dealings and not my preferred way to handle things but…..

#255 Rumor (Oracle, India): “One of the world’s largest software products company Oracle is known to have begun linking the payment of its 20,000-odd employees in India with the productive hours they spend in the company. This has given way to salary cuts, ranging between 10 and 50 per cent.”

#379 Oracle has purchased far too many software companies and is quickly gaining the reputation as a software burial ground. They have redundant product lines and are rapidly losing focus on the message they are trying to deliver to customers. Customers of software products Oracle has bought are growing more and more hostile toward Oracle and will close then out from any future business.

#380 Question is what really works.
IF acquisitions and consolidation works for both Corps and customer then its good.
Else it is not a sustainable model.

#507 As a former employee that was acquired by the big O, I have nothing but dismay for this company. Once we were acquired our existing customer base treated us much more hostile, despised the acquisition and put a roadblocks for doing further business. They all indicated doing business with Oracle was painful, slow, ineffective, and viewed Oracle as opportunists that capitalized on the software maintenance revenue streams, jack up the consulting rates, and blow the synergy/integration/red stack non sense at the base. When you swallow up as many companies as Oracle has you will get a case of bad indigestion evidenced by lack of focus and genuinely pissed off customer base.

Reduction in Force wave is coming

Rumors, Rumors, we don't see yet major moves actionned in Europe.
August UK Consulting RIF, and EMEA BEA redundancy RIF were the last ones announced.
However, Economy slowdown is hitting certain areas and we just expect announcement to be made, probably in the consulting/Apps area.
Oracle European Work's Council and Country local work's Council will have to be officially consulted before any redundancy plan deployment.

Still "officially" unconfirmed yet, you will see many goodbyes in the US, dated Jan 9th in the Layoff Blog

Are we talking about 8% of the sales force, 20% of its consulting staff, or just a few hundreds world wide ?

Severance package reported through comments seems very cheap for a company like Oracle : One month for the first year you serve and one week for each additional year you serve. 30 days Oracle covered COBRA (Medical Care).
Given all the extra efforts done worldwide and the company margin, we call for better level of global benefits towards the ex-employees.

Vision 2010 or 1929 ?
Read More :
Oracle Major Layoff - Computer World
Facts and Rumors - The Economist
Spectator October, Spectator November, Layoff Blog, Digital Daily,
India (40 layoffs over 25000)

Environnemental Responsability - Oracle Giving up ISO14001 Certification

Too bad, EMEA HR confirmed today that they will NOT go on the official ISO14001 certification process.
Although the official statement is still quite politically correct "Oracle will continue to act in accordance with environmental standard ISO 14001 but will no longer seek the get ISO 14001 certification due to the excessive cost of external certification".

We regret very deeply the lack of external control on our process, considering the major issues facing our World in the very near future. We all know, especially in this financial turnmoil, how important external control is.

We must reeckon we fail to have the company monitor its CO2 emissions. Lots of traveling in certain areas severly impacts the environnement... The only answer for now is to add hybrid cars to the Oracle Policy and also watch for coffee cups !
Giving up the certification is one more step, in contradiction with the marketing still published internally regarding the ISO14001 certification.

If Cost is an issue, our labor union volunteers to pass auditing training and pre-certification review control.
Let's not give up our future !

Read More :

• Oracle Insider Training Environnemental Teaser : Getting Certified (to be obsoleted ?)
• Oracle GEM : Green Employee Manifesto Wiki
  

US Court Ruling Oracle on Extra Hours

An appeal court of justice ruled against Oracle regarding extra hours compensations. Those extra hours need to be payed considering the working state and not their home states, and compensating with a ratio of 1.5 every hours above the 8 hours daily limit.
This sounds quite interesting as out-of-hours compensations are among the most difficult things to have compensated. Situation in France is quite a painfull as extra hours are hardly payed.

Know more : Press Article
This judgment is following an other one from Siebel times

UK Employee Consultation Forum

For internal viewers, prepared by UK Management & Marketing, please consider viewing this very interesting 7 minutes video presenting all the key interest points about having a country Employee Consultation Forum, enabling the company "to be more effective and a better place to work".

Why don't we have such an interesting representative body worlwide to have a better place to work worlwide and a world wide employee consultation forum ?

Shareholders getting nervous about Larry's compensation

The 38% increase on the 72 Millions USD salary package is making some shareholders nervous.
They are pressing for a say on compensation at Oracle, the second-largest computer software maker, whose 29 percent profit growth last fiscal year trailed Ellison's pay increase. The proposal, by the religious group Marianist Province of the U.S., is winning support from activist holders such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the California Public Employees' Retirement System.
Read More
The ``say on pay'' plan, which goes before investors at an Oct. 10 meeting, may get significant votes to draw attention...

Oracle Class Action News

When top executives claim everything is under control despite the turmoil in the economy,
When our top email system, despite beeing rdbms based with running logfiles cannot bring old emails back to live, even when those emails are Larry Ellison's.

You reach this interesting judge decision : " BOSTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - A federal judge has ruled that Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) destroyed or failed to preserve Chief Executive Larry Ellison's e-mail files sought as evidence in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 against the software maker"
More analysis here

Oracle 11g is Green

Have you seen this advertisement regarding Oracle 11G, nearly self labelled as 11 G Green, producing energy savings thanks to the "Green" compression technology, as less storage would be needed ?

This is so much in Oracle best expertise traditions, deploying a huge intelligence effort in marketing instead of doing the real hard work.

Despite significant savings efforts in Redwood Shores, Let's reckon much of the hard work is still to be done outside California, not the least internally, where no-one can say how much CO2 is generated from the internal travels.

Oracle Annoucement "Go Green with Fewer Disk Drives and Less Energy As seen in the Wall Street Journal and other major publications, Oracle is proud of the energy and space savings that Oracle Advanced Compression delivers. It helps Oracle Database 11g use much less the disk space and power, while it runs faster than ever before. With Oracle Advanced Data Compression, Oracle customers are making the planet a little greener"

See the interesting threads developpements "Green is not in Oracle vocabulary" , "Sorry Oracle : Green IT is for you too" from a Charles Philips interview, 11 G - "G" stands for Green or Greenbacks, Green is the new black,

Your comments are welcome.

For the records : Oracle Position - Beeing Green - Oracle High Tech Green Giant

BEA Oracle Acquisition - Change In Control

Let's wish a big welcome to our new collegues of BEA, joining us as EU just released its approval regarding the merge.

Your comments are welcomed below.

BEA Acquisition closing

Latest news from Reg Developper :
"Oracle's checks come as the company today cleared the latest hurdle in its proposed acquisition process. BEA shareholders on Friday voted to approve the deal, leaving just European Commission regulators to give the go ahead. The deal is expected close on April 30."

Sun / MySQL Acquisition : "Oracle is the only winner in this deal"

An interesting opinion from JOHN DVORAK'S @ Marketwatch, with many comments.

"I'm close to being convinced that Oracle wanted to buy MySQL to kill the product, but knew that it couldn't pull off the stunt itself. It would be too obvious, especially to European Union regulators. So it sent in a stooge to do the job."

Oracle Salary raises stuck

Non licence personal will have yet again to wait before seeing any salary increase for FY08.
Management annouced that these decisions will have to wait the Nov/December timeframe
For the first time in Oracle history, those salary raises will not be back ported to occur in September.
A good example on how to win 3 months in salary expenses credit.

Comprised Oracle UK Computers ?

DenyHosts reports is pointing Oracle UK computers for running SSH Attacks ?
No word from the company yet.
Full Article on The Register.

Hyperion Acquisitions - No redundancies - (Yet ?)

Following EMEA HR communication, The EWC consultation raises some doubts regarding the following statement

The EWC particularly appreciates that no redundancies in connection with the acquisition will be made ahead of the local subsidiary combinations.

Once again communication is the main concern as you will not be able to locate any EWC Rep internal website. Are we lacking internal communication facilities ?

EWC Special Meeting - France position

The EWC special meeting due to take place next week will consider the Hyperion acquisition, the On Demand Reorganisation, and the EWC Kick off.
Regarding the On Demand reorganisation, the FR Rep mandate to be confirmed next week during the Local Work's Council meeting, should be as follows :

1. What are the employement perspectives in support within Europe and Egypt (existing positions, forcasts, country per country distribution, critical capabilities...)
2. From an expert perspectives, what are the sensible alternate projects ?
3. What are the projects economics - Revenue&Margin per country, Cost breakdown
4. What is the expected Return on Investments and associated business plan.
5. What are the quality sustaining processes. What are the existing figures ?
6. What are the minimal conditions offered to employees loosing their jobs EMEA wide ?
7. Will the associated costs be cross charged to Oracle Corp ?
   What are the forseenable impacts on remaing employees "Compensation and Benefits" ?
8. What are the different scenarios regarding the possible social impacts ?
9. Country per Country Equity conditions regarding access to EMEA positions ?
10. Roumania On Demand hiring history details

We do expect the EWC to provide a detailled position regarding its position to the proposed collective redundancy. In fact, people are beeing made redundant by hiring new collegues in Roumania...

FR - No Country Kick-Off for support folks based outside Paris

BE AMAZED... Corporate Campaign says...

As an Oracle employee I feel deeply ashamed by the first exclusion of support employees, based outside Paris, who are beeing refused their flight approval for the annual meeting.

Despite the Vision 2010 annoucement, sharing strategy, beeing one team seems no longer to be an Oracle value...

Trade and Immigration lobbying

Keeping inline with gouvernement regulations, and maybe influencing those regulations, Oracle hired a lobbying company services to back up its interests towards congress.

Read more

Support Folks - No travelling please - Ever (??)

Welcome inside the support Matrix.

Different emails from management are heavily reminding support personnal that should never ever travel. In many cases personnal internal meetings are impratical, even for a yearly appraisal with your manager (???)
"The previous message included reference to face to face discussion which was incorrect, it is not a requirement to meet in person and is in many cases impractical in a global corporation."

Even Country kick off, physical off-site training are beeing covered by the heavy margin improvement-over-travelling goal.

Let's not forget that remote home working during normal work hours (and heavy traffic congestions) is still forbidden in many countries.

This makes the support Line of Business very much unaligned with Vision 2010, Corporate Social Responsability Energy Reduction Plan, training duties, and normal people management rules.

This sounds like going very very far in the savings, raising unhappy comments from employees.
What does the company expects in return for those cuts ?
Perhaps for more Employee headcount transfer towards Egypt ?

Where is my blue pill ?

Ex-Oracle VP to pay 198K$ to SEC for settlement

Acquisitions may be very lucrative when you get the information first hand...
CNN, SEWNEBR