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.
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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.

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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

Oracle EWC - Negociations failed ?

All Special Negociation Body representatives have tried hard to make Oracle European Work's Council a true vehicule to carry their interests in front of the management, in the spirit of the EU Directive.

However, the US Company management seems not to be in capability to cope with this level of initiatives from employees.

The following main hard issues could not be resolved :
- Consultation process and the possibility to consider employees points of view
- Transnational Events Triggering (how many people to dismiss before consulting ?)
- Agenda exclusion list - Too many items could not be brought towards management, especially when talking about employees' interests.

You may want to see the SNB expert letter sent as a compliance with expertise ethics .

Management has until May 11th to come back on these negociations before Oracle become the very first company in EU to run an EWC by law.

BIW Acquisition - Hyperion ?

The news is massively spreading in the internet world.
Hyperion is about to be purchased by Oracle for 3.1 Billion Dollars, quite reaching the 3.4 Billions Dollars FY06 GAAP net income. This would mark a very significant move within the BI Space.
No official statement has yet been released within Oracle nor towards Employee Reps.

More informations : New York Times

Indian workers are rising

You may be interested in recent moves in Bangalore, where Mahatma Gandhi country workers show they can raise to defend their social rights.
The social awareness process is under way...
More : January Strikes - Oct 2006 tech Strike

Oracle : Siebel Software developpers Over Time to be settled with 27.5 Million dollars

A huge class action is beeing successful regarding a wage-and-hour lawsuit against ex Siebel Company.
Each one of the 800 software developpers will get around 27000 Extra dollars for these forgotten hours.

A similar case is also still running in France and due for judgment in Feb.
Read More...

Good job guys ! (Information Courtesy of CGT Oracle France Labor Union)

Yet an other aquisition - SPL Workgroup

Following Portal Software, SunOpsis, Oracle announced an other Acquisition - SPL Workgroup aiming towards an end-to-end packaged revenue and operations management solution.