Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Oct. 22, 2018.
Bloomberg
More than 2,300 Oracle employees have signed a petition against a fundraiser for President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign that’s reportedly scheduled to be held on Wednesday at a Southern California property owned by founder and chairman Larry Ellison.
In the past few years, employees at Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce have spoken out against corporate practices they’ve disagreed with. Oracle has long been known as a technology supplier to the U.S. government; in a statement in September the company said the Central Intelligence Agency was the first customer to use the company’s database software decades ago. Former CIA chief Leon Panetta has held a seat on Oracle’s board since 2015, and in 2016 Oracle CEO Safra Catz joined President Trump’s transition team.
Oracle sought a major contract to provide cloud computing resources to the Pentagon, and in 2018 Catz had dinner with Trump. In October Microsoft won the contract, known by its acronym JEDI.
Petitioners want Ellison, currently Oracle’s chief technology officer, to cancel Wednesday’s event. They say that Trump’s behavior isn’t in line with Oracle’s values. One such value is opposition to corruption and bribery; the petition points to Trump’s impeachment in December.
“Ellison’s financial support of Donald Trump endangers the well-being of women, immigrants, communities of color, the environment, LGBTQ and trans communities, disabled people, and workers everywhere,” the petition states. “Additionally, his alliance with this ignoble and destructive figure damages our company culture as well as our relationships with partners and customers.”
Oracle declined to comment.
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