Global Bonus

Management announced last week that the intermediate payment of Global Bonuses has been cancelled.
The corporation intends to elaborate the bonus pools definitions during the fiscal year closure in order to optimize the announced results.

To be followed...

Oracle India Growing from 8,600 to 10,000 Employees

Expension plans détails are available here.

We welcome the indians employees, hopping they will bring top class assistance to our customer and in return take the opportunity to ask for benefits Oracle used to provide its US/EMEA workforce.

Happy New Year 2006

Oracle France CFDT Labor Union wishes you all a very happy new year 2006.


We also want to take this opportunity to ask your wishes regarding Oracle Social behaviour.

As an Oracle Employee, what would you like to see happening within Oracle ?

Please use the comment field below at your convenience.
It is completely anonymous.

Oracle/Siebel Merger - Call for Opinions

The European Union Merger Directory is conducting a consultation process regarding the Oracle/Siebel Merger and its potential impacts within Europe.

We have officially requested to be part of this consultation and will be willing to relay and compile your opinions regarding this merger.

Please send us comments, before Wedneday Dec 21th.

Larry to donate 100 M$

In order to settle the trial regarding a stock trading abuse in 2001, Larry accepted to donate 100 Million Dollars to a charity fund (more informations).
Also take note of the astronomic amount of attorney bills, adding an extra 22.5 Millions to make the deal.

Any comments welcome...

Negociating Handicapped people hiring goals within Oracle

Oracle EMEA has annonced its intentions to cover the Social Responsability Area and promote some employee participations in social care activities.
Oracle France CFDT Labor Union is happy to see Oracle moving in this direction and has officially requested to open negociations regarding Handicapped people hiring within Oracle.

We think that though labor union control, an active hiring policy towards handicapped people, the adaptation of workspaces, reconsidering insourcing back some activities like physical and phone reception would show the way of really making a better world with Oracle.

For more informations contact cfdtoracle@free.fr

Wanted : French Consultant for 1800 Euros

Tough times...
Consultant attrition is hard to compensate, and despite the internal calls for recruiting, with a 1800 cash for getting someone onboard, headcounts evolutions are still on the negative side, with many taking the opportunity for a change and a better consideration.
How many years would it take to build the 10+ years experienced consultants we loose ?

Apart from marketing, will we find a way to be the most admired company for the existing employees ?

France : PS/JDE EICP should be a thing from the past

Following the PS/JDE Merger, the French local Worker's council is beeing consulted on Terms & Conditions changes proposals to ex- JDE/PS employees.
Oracle intends to propose a move towards, Discretionnary Bonuses (Consulting/Admin/IT/Marketing/Translation...) or Oracle University Variable Salary (Education) (when appropriate) in exchange of a one time compensation.
This one time compensation, paid one shot when accepting the change, has been built to compensate 2 years EICP.
However, the third and the following years, Oracle rules will apply and may lead to lower discretionnary bonus payments, including no payment at all, as seen in the past.

This proposal should promote employee mobility and streamline management processes.
We feel Oracle proposals are also an attempt to move from a contractual salary to a non contractual one, not enforceable anymore.

However the decision is in each employee's hands, who should consider his bests interests.

EWC Negociations / Round 2 - Over

After 3 days of intense discussions, and despite a lot of good will from both parties, European Works Council within Oracle is not yet a reality.

If an aggreement definitly seems reachable, few hard points still needs to be discussed in depth, like, for example :
- Transnational Definitions - Triggering of EWC special Events. We feel Management actual proposals would enable too important dismissals or relocations without the ability to request an EWC meeting.
- Exclusion List : Terms & Conditions, Incentives and associated programs are still a never to be discussed subjects.

France SNB Representant.
Nota - This statement is not to be considered in any way as a common statement from the SNB Body.

EWC Negociations Day 1

Both parties have initiated the negociations in good faith and in a good spirit o fsharing each other's point of view. Some important negociation steps have already been achieved.
However, tomorrow will be critical with the very key points beeing put on the table.

We will be very careful regarding thoses points in comparison with the European standard EWC directive, that would take place for Oracle in May 2007 if no agreement is achieved before.

We have reasonable hope to manage to reconciliate management and representatives positions.
We'll keep you posted.

France Special Negociation Group Representant.
These comments are purely individual and are not to be considered as representatives of the whole SNB Body.

Oracle European Workers Council negociations

A second round of negociations, one year after the previous ones is due to start today till Friday 14th.

The objective of these negociations with Top HR EMEA Management is to agree on a European Workers Council rules, before May 2007, where the European Community Default agreement will take place.

We want to have the opportunity to share our views with management and give the opportunity
of early feedback, for a better customer and employee satisfaction, and overall, a better complany performance.

We will keep you posted with the responses from management.

France SNB Representative.

Larry Ellison doubles his FY05 salary up to 7.5 M$

We recommand the reading of the following article regarding Larry Ellison, Safra Katz and Jeff Henley compensation.
Their salary, Bonus and stock compensation bounce is impressive compared to FY04.

Regarding employees share of this success, we're talking of the same ultra-limited 3% salary increase in France, to be allocated at manager's discretion..

Oracle & IBM - The Indian Cup Race

We recommand reading the article from Steve Lohr Published June 24, 2005 in the The New York Times.

13000 Jobs are beeing shutdown'ed in Europe/US while 14,000 are created in India.

Indian IT Professionals Competencies

Again from one of our readers, yet an other article from developer Pipeline :

Finally, wrapping up the current thread of offshore outsourcing, there's yet again a mixed-bag of information. On the one hand are stories noting an increasing ambivalence about outsourcing among IT executives, and a growing shortage of skilled workers in offshore center India threatens to raise wages there and possibly put a dent in future growth. On the flip-side, the labor shortage shows just how hot and high-growth the Indian IT job market is, and Indian software exports jumped 34% last year, to $12 Billion, so someone is hiring all of those programmers. One of your colleagues shared his thoughts about the best strategy for first-world programmers to stay competitive, and we printed his letter here. If you'd like to share your thoughts, we'd like to hear them -- this is one area among many where Developer Pipeline will try to bring you the latest news and information.

No place for E-Workers councils

Management has notified the local labor council today that they were now due to stop any communications towards employees on their internal site, apart from the sport/leisure stuff.
This decision comes at the exact same time with the restart of the Peoplesoft Merger Layoffs consultation, and after latests communications were reported as beeing the top hits from the web server.

The local Worker's council had managed to get a justice decision to cancel the previous Layoff consultation and made his position very clear towards employees.

Management seems to have decided it is time again to move back towards dark ages regarding Employee communication (raw paper distribution is still allowed ...).

Which Place for E-Labor Unions

A trial will be held June 15th, in the 14th court of Justice of the Versailles Appeal court (5 Rue Carnot - Versailles - France).
What is at stake is the capability for a trade union to receive free subscriptions to an external newsgroup in order to send social communications to Oracle Employees.
400+ employees subscribed to a vos-droits-oracle@yahoogroups newsletter since 2001. In August 2005, a law rewriting conducted Oracle Management to ask this newsgroup to be suspended because no aggreement had been concluded with the local labor union.
The labor union, referred to individual freedom rights and the internal internet usage policy allowing personnal access to internet.
If personnal and professional usage of internet and emails was allowed - Why would labor union E-usage be prohibited ?

The law indicates that labor union emails shall comply with antispam regulations and shall not overwhelm the internal systems. Would a 400 freely subscribed employee monthly letter be able to jam the huge internal Oracle Email System ?

This shall be examined by the Versailles court next week.

Offshore Salaries: Vietnam Is Cheapest, But India Is Still A Bargain

By courtesy of one of our readers and from InformationWeek, we advise you to read this report regarding IT developpers costs.
Indian salaries are still low and offer a place of choise regarding offshore.

Some Cold, Hard Numbers On Outsourcing

Again a very interesting post submitted by one of our readers, from Richard HoffmanEditor, Developer Pipeline, showing the state of mind of US IT professionals.

Please note the "Better Job security and increased wages" ... We're on the same line from both sides of the Ocean...

Editor's Note: Some Cold, Hard Numbers On Outsourcing

Greetings, colleagues!
The final numbers are in for our offshore outsourcing poll, and it's pretty much as grim as we reported last week. One out of 20 of you (5%) say "bring it on," another 5% say outsourcing actually benefits you, and a few, 3%, say if you can't beat 'em, join 'em—you said, whether tongue-in-cheek or not, that you're going to relocate yourself offshore. Another 20% say you're worried, but not too much—it hasn't directly affected your working life yet. However, a large majority, 59% of you, say that offshoring is a big, big problem, right now. And in an echo of the previous poll on IT workplace conditions, almost one out of ten of you who responded said that you're bailing out of IT entirely.

So bottom-line, 13% of you are pretty positive about offshore outsourcing in one way or another, 20% are worried but neutral, and 68% have already been burned. Wow. With numbers like that, it's hard to put a positive spin on it. Almost seven out of ten of you don't like what's happening out there at all. So now that we have the results, what do you think about them?

One of our recent articles is a refrain of the song you're clearly singing here, suggesting that the pressures and challenges of outsourcing-centric development, including the move towards 24-hour development cycles, is already causing serious strain and difficulties.

Could these difficulties have contributed to Sears recently bailing out of a huge, $1.6 billion outsourcing deal with Computer Sciences Corporation only months into the project? So far, nobody is saying anything about the cause of the split, but if you have an opinion, or even better, an inside scoop, let us know - we'd love to hear what you have to say.

Speaking of opinions, many of you continued to chime in over the past weeks with strong, clear thoughts on the topic. Here are a few of them:

Terry R. notes a potential cause and effect between outsourcing and a shortage in Computer Science graduates in the Unites States:

Now that outsourcing has caused a significant reduction in Computer Science enrollment some leaders are saying that we need to boost enrollment or lose our lead in IT. Of course no one has suggested the obvious solution, better job security and increased wages.

In a nutshell, it is foolish to think the US can send our high tech jobs overseas to lower costs and still maintain our lead. Engineers and programmers are bright people, if they can't make a good living in IT they will go to a field where they can.

Of course a significant shortage of U.S. programmers will, due to the basic laws of supply and demand, tend to boost wages for at least some of those who are left. Another way of looking at that, though, is that extremely scarce and expensive U.S. programmers makes bean-counters more likely to want to move development to lower-cost offshore centers, as well as bring in more H1-B workers . What about it? Are we just creating a vicious cycle here?

Phil B. notes an even more ominous trend, speculating that other overriding market forces will put a natural limit on outsourcing of IT:

Surely I've been affected by the outsourcing, however in my opinion that trend has no future. Never mind all the quality problems, missed deadlines etc plaguing the outsourcers. The key factor that will undermine the outsourcers is the US dollar which despite short term fluctuations is in the slow motion collapse because of the astronomical US trade deficit. The outsourcers only add to that deficit thereby hastening the dollar's decline.

According to India Daily at 37 rupees to the dollar the indian software sector will be breaking even—at 35 rupees to the dollar they will be closing down; rate has already declined to 43. Any economist will tell you that the dollar has nowhere to go but down given the disastrous US trade situation. Here's the New York University study predicting a collapse no later than 2006.

That situation has now become structural as the US simply does not produce much of the stuff anymore and must import. The outsourcing will die within the next few years at the very most. I think that situation needs to be made widely known

Is this all a moot point, then? If the dollar continues to slide against other currencies, does that make offshore outsourcing impractical? And will that have any impact on other first-world but non-U.S. outsourcing trends? Let us know what you think.

Richard Hoffman
Editor, Developer Pipeline
rhoffman@nwc.com
www.DeveloperPipeline.com

Oracle purchases 2 developpement centers in India

Please follow the link.

400,000 Euros for an illegal Firing

A french employee of Oracle gained 400 KE in Justice by convicting Oracle France of illegal firing in a case very similar to Pier Carlo Falotti.
Beeing fired a few days before beeing able to vest his stock options was considered as an abuse by French judges. Oracle France has decided to escale to appeal court.

More informations to come soon...