jeudi 29 décembre 2005

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.


dimanche 18 décembre 2005

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.

vendredi 25 novembre 2005

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...

vendredi 4 novembre 2005

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

mercredi 26 octobre 2005

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 ?

jeudi 20 octobre 2005

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.

lundi 17 octobre 2005

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.

mercredi 12 octobre 2005

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.

lundi 10 octobre 2005

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.

vendredi 2 septembre 2005

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..

dimanche 19 juin 2005

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.

vendredi 10 juin 2005

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 ...).

mercredi 8 juin 2005

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.

dimanche 5 juin 2005

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.

mardi 24 mai 2005

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

jeudi 19 mai 2005

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...

lundi 16 mai 2005

Oracle France Worker's council in Justice

Friday May 13th, the french worker's council acted in Justice to have Peoplesoft layoff plan cancelled.
Very eager to have 7% of its workforce layed-off, Oracle France decided to play a pre-merger dismissal plan, due to planned redudancies when the legal merger will happen (May 31th in France).

The negociation failed with the CFDT labor union regarding job internal redeployment, layoff compensations and job search readiness process.

As Oracle lawyer agreed to reckon flaws in front of the judge, jugdment shall come quickly and order a full restart/review of the layoff plan.

The cancelled process may be the opportunity to build common ground on the company's future and shared benefits for all of those who made peoplesoft purchase possible.

Decision from justice is due end of May.

dimanche 1 mai 2005

Le capitalisme et ses cadres

Une fois n'est pas coutume, nous vous recommandons chaleureusement la lecture de
"La Fatigue des élites : le capitalisme et ses cadres" (Seuil, la République des idées).
Il s'agit d'une analyse sans concession de la place du travail dans nos sociétés mondialisées, particulièrement représentative de ce que nous connaissons chez Oracle et dans d'autres sociétés.
Une tres longue et interessante interview peut être écoutée sur le site on demand de France Culture.
Quand on parle de divorce entre les cadres et leurs entreprises, et quand le syndicalisme s'essaye à éviter le sauve-qui-peut individuel...

samedi 9 avril 2005

PSE - Quelques Questions/Reponses

Merci beaucoup de vos questions postées et de votre interêt pour le site.

Q/a) est-ce que les licenciements peuvent quand même avoir lieu pour les collectifs qui ne concernent qu'une seule des deux sociétés?

R/a) La procédure de plan social est un tout, avec un ensemble de mesures qui se veulent cohérentes et liées à une même origine. L'opposition au Plan actuel est justement réalisée dans cet objectif car nous prétendons que des personnes licenciées chez Oracle, pourraient retrouver un reclassement chez Peoplesoft (version fusionnée), et vice versa. Or la conduite du processus actuel ne donne pas de visibilité croisée à chaque Comité d'Entreprise. Il est notamment indispensable que la commission de suivi soit multi-société, comme cela avait été envisagé dans l'accord de méthode, afin de se donner des chances de vraiment reclasser des salariés, susciter des ouvertures de postes, au lieu d'avancer tambour battant pour achever les licenciements le 26 Mai, avant même la fusion !
Il n'en demeure pas moins qu'une nouvelle procédure peut être initiée sur un périmêtre strictement Oracle.

Q/b) Ma compréhension est que la consultation à propos de la fusion est séparée de celle du plan social. Qu'en est-il de l'avis du CE à propos de la fusion? Sera-t-il rendu avant le 15 avril ou non?

R/b) L'interêt de tous est effectivement de réaliser la fusion dans les meilleurs délais. C'est effectivement l'objet de la consultation du CE au titre du livre 4, pour laquelle la direction attend un avis intermédiaire, 'avis d'étape', ne couvrant que l'aspect juridique de la fusion. Pour autant, il est absolument indispensable qu'une information loyale, écrite et exhaustive soit fournie par la direction sur cette fusion. C'est sur ce point que les choses semblent patiner, car malgré une bonne volonté affichée par la direction, les informations arrivent à la toute toute dernière minute.
Le CE jugera de manière souveraine, avec ses experts (qui font des heures sups encore a cette heure...) s'il a effectivement eu le temps d'etudier toutes les informations lui permettant de rendre un avis.

Q/c) Dans le cas où Oracle décide d'envoyer les lettres de licenciement comme prévu, qu'elle devrait être la démarche des salariés concernées: continuer à chercher un autre emploi ou attendre que la situation soit juridiquement réglée? Et dans ce cas, quelles seraient les possibles issues?

R/c) Le processus de licenciement ne peut se dérouler qu'après l'avis du CE et de l'inspection du travail. Il serait suicidaire à la direction de passer outre. Par contre, il est tout à fait possible qu'elle intente le cas échéant une action juridique pour exiger la remise de l'avis en considérant la position du CE comme totalement infondée et entravant délibérément la procédure. Pour le moment, c'est plutot le CE qui prend les devants en envisageant l'action en justice pour suspendre la consultation dans l'attente de la fusion.

PS. Cf également les commentaires ci-dessous (suivre "comment").

mardi 8 mars 2005

Qu'est-il arrivé à la semaine des 40 H (US / Suite)

Editor's Note: The Stormy Seas Of Discontent

Greetings, colleagues!

The letters keep coming, in an avalanche of disgruntled
ex-workaholics, worn-down cogs in the corporate machinery, and
disheartened developers. Many of you are distinctly unhappy with the
state of the IT Development world, and your own place in it. Some of
you questioned whether the problem is with the whole IT industry, or
just the U.S. segment of it. Jim T. wrote:

"About a year and a half ago I was in Germany discussing IT support
with one of our companies site IT managers. He asked me how we handled
off-hours support in the US. I explained that I was on call 7x24 and
was required to respond within 15 minutes of a page. His response was
that they couldn't get away with that in Germany and wanted to know
what I did if I wanted to go out and have a beer.

I think what US companies get away with is insane."

Are long hours, weekends and evenings on the job, the price of being
competitive in the global marketplace, or just a consequence of bad
management?


Ryan H. shares his opinion:
"Forcing me to work overtime and then harping on me to do more, tells
me that the upper management didn't plan well enough and now has to
break my back to cover their mistake. It also says they care more
about what I produce, thenme as a person. People are not robots. We
are living, breathing, thinking, caring people. Lets hope that we can
get back to a period of relativeeconomic peace."

And the talk about competitiveness and market economics had Larry W. seeing red:
"I am so very sick and tired of hearing all the talk about hours
worked. I have worked with several projects that have used off shore
resources (China, India, elsewhere). And the only issue that matters
is not the number of hours worked, it is what is produced. The number
of hours worked is another useless metric, just like number of lines
of code produced. Those are totally irrelevant to the real issue: the
quality and timeliness of the product produced. An on-time project
that does not meet the users' needs, or has serious quality issues, is
a waste of money. Managers who think more hours, or cheaper labor, are
the way to "sustain economic growth" need to sit down and read the
Mythical Man Month, and understand some basic truths.

Throwing more developers onto a project will more likely make it take
longer to complete. Making developers work more hours will have the
same result. I have seen these again and again in 24 years of software
development. Better productivity, which means done sooner, and with a
higher quality result, occurs most often when the employees have a
sense of loyalty to their employer, and that will only occur if they
believe that the employer has a sense of loyalty to them. Far too few
companies these days understand that...
That said, I am very fortunate to work for a company that only
requires 37.5 hours a week of effort, and overtime requests are few,
and far between."

Finally, John B. from Chicago, whose letter of response which we
printed two newsletters ago touched off this firestorm, provided this
follow-up:
"I should have mentioned that I was a manager at one time, with as
many as 7 direct, and 30 indirect reports (it was a matrixed
organization). I always protected my players and sent them home for
R&R, and it always worked out okay because users sought out my
services and my team. GE was the best place I ever worked, and man,
did I put in the hours. But unlike the developer you mentioned in the
latest editorial, I WAS rewarded for that hard work, but it was UP TO
ME as a manager to reward my team, which I did of course, asking my
managers for trinkets and time for "my guys" (and a girl). GE was and
is an anomaly, though.
Anyway, it's good to learn I'm not alone. Is this the point were we
start singing, "We Shall Overcome"?
It's up to you. Many, many of you are clearly, seriously unhappy with
the current state of your careers and the IT industry in general. What
do you intend to do about it? Has being a developer become so
stressful and unpleasant that you're considering getting out entirely?
Or is it just a matter of finding the right haven, a company that
provides reasonable pay for a reasonable amount of work? Some of you
wrote in to say that such places are not entirely mythical, they do in
fact exist, but are they really so rare? Or, are you thinking about
jumping ship into the world of freelance consulting, and is that
really any panacea?

Let me know what you're thinking about your chosen career and current
working conditions. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel, or is
it the proverbial oncoming train? How about you IT managers - are
things really that bad, and is there anything you can do about it?

Let Developer Pipeline help you get the information you need to do the
right thing, in the right place, at the right time. And any time, let
us know how we're doing, and what we can do better.

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

samedi 19 février 2005

Qu'est-il arrivé a la semaine de 40H ?

Transmis par un de nos lecteurs assidus.
Merci a tous de vos contributions et commentaires.

Concernant l'article, on s'y croirait...

Developer Pipeline Newsletter Editor's Note: What Happened To The 40-Hour Week?

This week, editor Richard Hoffman took a well deserved break. However, one of the readers of this newsletter sent him an interesting reply to the Editor's Note of last week's newsletter. Looks like Richard's topic certainly hit a hot button! Here now are the thoughts of John B. from Chicago, a 20-year veteran in the world of information technology and a mainframe developer.

It's shocking to some, but I just don't want to be that "in touch."

Perhaps I'm a bit of a whiner with a bad work ethic, or perhaps I'm just a slacker ahead of my time. But being 46 years old and a mainframe "developer," I remember when we had time to ourselves, time to think, listen to music, and most importantly, be with our families.

I was fired from a prominent company because I couldn't and wouldn't work 15 hours a day, all the time, and be at the beck and call of my manager 24/7.
Why did he need me to be there for him? Because he made ill-conceived promises to users.

Now, I used to be a workaholic, back when it mattered, back when they kept you after a merger if you were a valued employee, or you advanced if you showed above-par effort. But now, threats invade the workplace:
"Productivity must increase, or else India will get all our business!"
"You can't compete with a global workforce if you don't squeeze more throughput out!"
When I heard those statements, I redoubled my efforts, but it came to the point that I became insignificant in the lives of my two daughters. So, I made a choice 17 months ago. I'm now unemployed -- and enjoying every minute of it.

I got to see my eldest daughter's softball season. I've finally got time to write a thriller novel based on IT. My blood pressure has decreased. Now, I know I'm lucky; I have the luxury of being unemployed even after the severance ran out. Many others, lacking the savings we had, don't. Their lives are, to me, less meaningful because of being shackled to work.

I fear we've entered a new age of Robber Barons, and in a hundred years of labor law, we've only changed the color of the collar and learned NOTHING.

I don't believe for a minute that other countries' citizens are more productive, more intelligent, or more innovative then those in the USA. We've allowed greed to take hold. Corporations ought to stop looking at employees as expenses and instead find ways to sell more
widgets and to dream up new, different widgets to maximize potential earnings. When we look inward to cut costs, we exchange the long-term view for an acceptance that we have done all we can to sell all we could.

We have no eye on the prize anymore.

So we enslave ourselves with gadgets to stay in touch with the "action," forever paranoid that if we blink, the other guy will get the advantage. We don't know, or can't remember, what it was like before CNN played disasters on TV as they happened. We all are familiar with the 24-hour news cycle, but are we willing to accept a 24-hour labor cycle? If my boss can find me, s/he can interrupt me, but shouldn't that person have to compensate me for that privilege?

What ever happened to the eight-hour day? Why is the 40-hour week considered a luxury? Overtime is fine in certain cases, but must it become a daily requirement?

Send your comments on this topic to: Richard Hoffman, Editor,
Developer Pipeline, at
rhoffman@mwc.com, and he'll reply to you upon
his return next week.
Keep Getting This Newsletter

Don't let future editions of Developer Pipeline Newsletter go missing.
Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam
whitelist:
develed@techwire.com