Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian'

jfruh writes "A former Oracle sales manager is suing the database company for what he called racially discriminatory salary-setting practices. Ian Spandow wanted to transfer a high-performing salesman from Oracle's India office to California. When he requested a salary of $60,000 a year or more for the employee, equivalent to what his white American counterparts received, he was told instead to offer $50,000, which was 'good money for an Indian.' When Spandow protested, he was himself summarily fired."

Indians are hired for low wages

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an Oracle office in India for a reason. They're cheap. Defeats the purpose if you bring them all over here on US wages, wouldn't it? Might as well hire Americans, god forbid!

Re:Shocking

[CdBee]

If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products by all us techies until Oracle produce an open salary audit proving no racial differentials between staff at the same locations. The allegation if true is disgraceful

Re:Shocking

[jellomizer]

Umm... I don't think Boycott is what you think it is.
You really don't need to be justified to boycott a product/company. You can do it whenever you really want.

Besides no matter how bad Oracle gets, if your Boss says use this Oracle product or your fired, then you will probably be a little less outraged.

Now this if proven true in court, could be justifiable for Oracle workers to unionize and strike.

Re:Oracle is not a person

[biodata]

If a company is not a person, how do they have any rights?

Re:Indians are hired for low wages

[bradgoodman]

Yes and no. There are many well-educated, foreign countries in which US companies (several I have worked for) try to hire-in, in an attempt to lower labor costs. India is one, there's also Russia, Singapore, etc. It's all about supply and demand. US companies flock to these countries and start hiring. This increases demand and decreases supply. After a while, the salary offset isn't as large, and there becomes less incentive to do so. This is starting to happen in many countries, and it's a good thing for workers everywhere. (Foreign employees get paid more, less desire to ship US jobs overeases = Good for US workers).

Re:B-But Muh Talent

[game kid]

We need to make the undocumented workers legal so they can be taxed.

Exactly. (If you meant that in sarcasm, you're more right than you think.) Our government (feebly attempts to) turn back lots of good taxpayers [itep.org] who just want a decent wage and standard of living. We can put public records (and, yes, the NSA) to good use: gather info on the immigrants before they attempt to enter, and when they try and if they are able to learn our history without posing an imminent threat to lives, make them legal in 82 minutes--not 82 YEARS (WTF?) [beancard.com]. This would encourage upstanding behavior, bring in more taxes, bring in more ideas that would give more people here and abroad a job to keep busy, and leave the law enforcers free to properly fight real enemies of the state, like banks [nbcnews.com].

Certain 'Murican types say that Those Damn Illegals don't follow the law and Took Er Jerbs. I remind them that no one follows the law [youtube.com] and we should update the law to conform with basic respect, common sense, and our dire budget--and maybe our new Americans can give them their next job.

Re:Shocking

[TWX]

Yeah, Larry Ellison has been a dick for as long as I've been aware of his existence, and probably a lot longer than that.

I'm reminded of an exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway [quotecounterquote.com].

Ellison is no different than any other Type-A asshole, he just has more money. Arguably his biggest flaw is that he loves to flaunt what he has while being a huge dick while giving interviews to the press, so we can't help but want to punch him in the face.

Re:Shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that. Any Java developer can develop in C# too, unless they're braindead (a reasonable fear for Java developers). There's really not much C# can't do that Java can. And there's actually quite a bit that C# can do that Java can't. Case in point: UInt64 foo = 0x123456789abcdef0;

Re:Shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Mono works on Android and, in my experience, the dev times are much faster than using the built-in APIs. Combine with Monogame, which took the place of XNA and has Microsoft's full support, and you have a really viable (though not perfect) cross-platform gaming solution. If you want to give it a try, I recommend Xamarin studio.

http://xamarin.com/android

Xamarin has been endorsed by Microsoft as a legal and legitimate cross-platform c# vendor for a while now. Microsoft may still be evil, but whoever is running their C# ecosystem is yet untainted. *fingers crossed*

Re:Shocking

[CAIMLAS]

So if "going rate" is 60k and I offer someone 50k, that's discriminatory? That happens All. The. Time. Except it happens with "locals" - it's called negotiating from a position of power. Employers think they've got a position of power (ie something the interviewee wants) and use it. How is this any different?

Why would I ever offer an Indian a job, then? What I understand here is that this is a big mess because the fucking H1B worker didn't get preferential treatment?!

That's idiotic.

I hate Oracle on numerous grounds, but I'm on their side on this one.