Laid-off Oracle workers tried to negotiate better severance — and Oracle said no
The software giant Oracle has laid off more than 1,300 employees over the past six months. Most of the management-led layoffs have fallen outside the two-month notice protection of the US WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act. The workers fall outside the law's reach because the company has classified them as remote workers.
The WARN Act requires US companies with more than 100 employees to give at least 60 days' notice before any mass layoff that would affect 50 or more workers. The act guarantees workers both prior notice and roughly two months of pay. But it calculates employee thresholds by "single site of employment." Because Oracle does not attribute its remote workers to any one site, no single site has crossed WARN's 50-employee threshold.
One of the laid-off workers is Daniel Kim, 47, a senior software engineer who spent 11 years at Oracle in San Jose. "Two years ago the company asked us to work remotely. They said it was the new normal after the pandemic. Now the same classification deprives me of WARN's protection. This is nothing but exploiting the law's loopholes."
Kim and 240 of his fellow ex-employees set up a group to negotiate a better severance package. The company's offer covered four to 12 weeks of pay depending on tenure; the workers asked for 12 weeks of pay plus an extension of health insurance, in lieu of WARN's 60-day prior notice. Oracle's management refused, arguing that it is fully compliant with the law. Company spokesperson Mary Stevens said: "Our severance package is at industry average and well above all applicable legal requirements."
How the WARN Act applies to remote workers has become one of the biggest legal debates in recent years. In 2023, the US Department of Labor issued guidance recommending that remote workers be classified by where they actually work, not by a notional "home office." That guidance, however, is not legally binding. Twitter (X), Meta and Google all conducted similar large-scale layoffs between 2023 and 2025, classifying remote workers as outside WARN's reach.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (also the company's chairman and chief technology officer) framed the layoffs as part of the company's three-year structural-change strategy. In March 2026, the company announced a restructuring plan aimed at $7 billion in annual savings in legacy product-development departments to refocus on AI and cloud-services segments. Most of the laid-off employees are senior engineers from the Oracle Database, Java and Solaris teams.
Oracle posted its most recent quarter at $27 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in net profit. Year-on-year revenue growth was 14%, a strong performance for investors. Despite the layoffs, the share price rose 3%; markets read the structural workforce reductions as cost control.
Labour-law experts say Oracle's approach is legally defensible but ethically contested. UC Berkeley Law professor Catherine Fisk said: "The WARN Act was drafted in 1988 for an office-centric workforce. The fact that remote work has become widespread by 2026 means the law has to be modernised if it is to remain effective. The fact that companies like Oracle are exploiting the loopholes only confirms the case for modernisation."
Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a new bill in March 2026 to modernise the WARN Act. The bill would count remote workers via a company's "registered headquarters" and apply the 50-worker threshold at the company level rather than per site. The bill is currently in the Senate Labor Committee; a vote is expected in autumn 2026.
Kim and other laid-off Oracle employees are considering a broader-coalition federal class action. Their lawyers said the suit aims to push a "company-level counting" reading of the WARN Act. "However long this legal process takes, workers are not protected legally. The existing system requires Congress to act to close the loophole," said attorney James Welsh. Oracle declined to comment on the case.