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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hardly B. Solipsist who wrote (14251)	8/19/2000 12:50:57 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 19080

This case might have had a different outcome had it not been a pregnant employee that was terminated. I know that wasn't the key allegation in the case but I suspect it played a part in the verdict. First of all, there have been a bunch of age discrimination suits filed against Oracle, so there is this sense that Oracle might not play fair in the personnel area (unlike other companies like Cisco). And judges are quite sympathetic to terminated pregnant employees because after all, if you are terminated when you are 4 mos pregnant realistically what are your chances at finding another job, and that in itself leads to additional stress which can cause health complications, etc. Had Oracle known Ms. Baratta was pregnant they should have "re-orged" her into another position at full salary. Now I realize they are saying they didn't know... but this was a card she could play, they should have known that. I am aware of a few class action suits against Computer Associates, and the one case where someone really won a large settlement was the case of a pregnant employee being terminated. I know all about the difficulties of managing a dept where a number of people are new parents or have small children. Its rough - there is a lot of downtime for those employees and the others have to take up the slack. There is nothing you can do about it though, and there is no excuse for a company the size of Oracle not to factor parenthood into their personnel estimates regarding staffing. Oracle is going to have to grow up and become a better corporate citizen. Anyway I know that isn't what this case was about... it was supposedly software piracy, but Oracle should have known they couldn't win and settled this out of court.