Oracle stunned employees on March 31, 2026, when the company announced layoffs of around 20,000 employees via email. The layoffs began across Oracle's global offices, with workers in the United States, India, and other regions reporting termination emails landing in their inboxes as early as 6 AM EST. The emails, sent from "Oracle Leadership," informed employees that their roles had been eliminated as part of a broader organizational change and that the day they received the email was their last working day.
Laid-Off Employees Fight for Rights
A report by TechCrunch details how laid-off employees are fighting the company for their rights. One former Oracle employee told TechCrunch, "I went to sign into the VPN, and it said, 'this user doesn't exist anymore.' Then I called my friend, and she said, 'No, your account's been deactivated.'"
Oracle's Severance Terms Under Fire
Oracle offered laid-off employees approximately four weeks of pay for the first year of service, along with one additional week per year thereafter, capped at 26 weeks. The severance package also included one month of COBRA insurance. However, employees were required to sign a waiver relinquishing their rights to sue. The biggest point of contention between Oracle and the laid-off employees was the lack of accelerated vesting of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). Many workers lost a significant compensation amount tied to stock grants. According to the TechCrunch report, one long-term employee forfeited nearly $1 million in RSUs that were just months away from vesting.
Loopholes in the WARN Act
The report further noted that another shocker was Oracle's classification of many employees as remote workers, which excluded them from WARN Act protections in states without strong worker provisions. The WARN Act requires companies to give 60 days' notice for mass layoffs affecting 50 or more employees at a single location. By labeling staff as remote, Oracle sidestepped these requirements. Some employees also said they were unaware of their remote classification, despite working hybrid schedules near offices. Even for those covered, Oracle counted WARN Act notice pay within its severance calculation, meaning workers did not receive additional compensation.
Failed Negotiation Attempts
At least 90 employees signed a petition urging Oracle to match severance terms offered by other tech giants. Competitors like Meta, Microsoft, and Cloudflare provided more generous packages, including accelerated stock vesting and extended healthcare coverage. Oracle, however, declined to negotiate, leaving employees with a take-it-or-leave-it choice. The company has not commented publicly on its severance terms or WARN Act classifications.
After 20,000-Plus Layoffs: How Oracle's 'Promise' to Sam Altman Is Hurting Banks Across the US
Recently, it was reported that Oracle is facing a bank-debt "problem" due to its deal with the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI. This comes as American banks struggle to absorb the scale of financing tied to Oracle's data center expansion plans. According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, the issue stems from a $300 billion agreement between Oracle and the Sam Altman-led OpenAI, which requires massive borrowing to fund data centers in Texas and Wisconsin. JPMorgan Chase and other US banks have reportedly found it difficult to distribute these loans due to exposure limits linked to a single borrower.
The WSJ report cited people familiar with the matter to claim that lenders spent months trying to spread the risk of billions of dollars in loans tied to Oracle-backed data center projects. Many financial institutions have internal limits on how much exposure they can take to one company, and the scale of Oracle-related borrowing has pushed those limits. As a result, some bank balance sheets became constrained, affecting their ability to finance additional projects linked to Oracle and OpenAI.
