By Mike Rinder
One of the tragedies of the reign of Miscavige is the utter disregard for staff well-being.
There have been LRH orders extant since the late 70’s to resolve staff pay. He identified it as a major reason for orgs not expanding and later as a key block to accomplishing the objective of LRH ED 339R – Saint Hill Size Orgs.
If you cannot afford to live as a staff member, you either moonlight or leave staff. Many dedicated individuals have joined staff thinking that they would be able to contribute to expanding the org and as a result, make a viable living through staff. But the problem is the finance system that orgs are forced to operate on leaves so little for staff pay that even when the org grows, the percentage of income devoted to staff pay is so small, and so much comes “off the top” that the increase in the number of staff needed to deliver what is required to sustain increased income simply divides the staff pay sum by more people. There is a fault in the SYSTEM. It’s well known.
Why didn’t this ever change if LRH said it should? Back in the early 80’s there was a project called “The Staff Pay Project”. It was not completed before LRH went off the lines. And from that time forward, Miscavige has had literally hundreds of submissions on staff pay, none of which he would approve. There are probably hundreds of pages of transcripts of rambling meetings Miscavige had with International Management and Finance personnel (back in the “good old days” when they were nominally on post) where he pontificated at length about what should be done. Problem is (as others have described) the “direction” that he gave was invariably confusing and often times contradictory. And then any submission to him would be rejected because it didn’t “comply” with some line in a 50 page transcript of his ramblings. Tens of thousands of hours of executive time have been spent M9ing the endless transcripts from DM, then putting together submissions to him attempting to satisfy all his dictates (literally an impossible task as one day he would say one thing and then the next it would be the opposite). So, why isn’t there a workable staff pay system? Because to this day Miscavige refuses to put one out. (In case someone out there saw a Staff Pay system in 2004 that was “done personally by COB” that he PR’d as being a solution to staff pay, I ask you – did it work?
THE CANCER OF THE IAS
There is a second problem with staff pay: the takeover and dominance of Scientology by the IAS and the proliferation of building and library donations. Funds channeled into these endless sinkholes do not go on the regular org GI and Financial Planning lines. So, funds that could be being donated for services (which are part of the org GI and FP) are being siphoned off. Miscavige doesn’t want to interrupt these Condition 0 Exchange activities (after all, all you need to “deliver” for a hundred thousand donated to the IAS is a pin, a trophy and some imbecilic title). You can’t increase staff pay or build orgs while still having the IAS as the “senior organization” in Scientology. Hence, Miscavige’s decision was easy, if shortsighted: pour the coals on the IAS and org staff be damned.
Just as an aside on the IAS – it is a Third Dynamic engram by definition. It was an arbitrary implemented at one time to solve the problem of creating an untouchable pool of money out of the reach of the IRS that could be used to pay off the IRS if they did not grant the Church tax exempt status. After 1993, it had served its purpose and should have been disbanded and the public should have been informed that it was no longer needed. But, by that time it was a cash cow for Miscavige that was too good to discard, no matter the havoc it would wreak on organizations.
If you have read the LRH article “What Your Fees Buy” you will be familiar with the fact that LRH intended the fees for SERVICES to not only support the local organization, but to fund the defense of the religion, to finance projects to bring LRH tech into different sectors of society and to promote Dianetics and Scientology. Following are quotes from “What Your Fees Buy”:
It costs money to bring cases up to the US Supreme Court level as we have. The legal defense expenses we have in a dozen countries is not small.
So a portion of your fee goes to keeping the subject available to you and to the world.
Your fee supports a long and complex set of communication lines by which tech and admin can be cared for rapidly.
A portion of your fee just the other day began a survey of a backward country to introduce high speed educational processes to bring their people quickly from the Stone Age up to present time. The “Peace Corps” was also there on cushy government funds building houses for a big construction company at a nice profit. But we, unsupported, began the effective work actually needed there to help the people.
A tiny bit of your fee neated up an area ruined for the Americans by the American Navy.
Small parts of your fee heal up a lot of things over the world.
But the biggest part of your fee stays right in your area. It is used to make training and processing and data available to the next fellow first by keeping the org there and second by letting him know about it and third by making as sure as possible that the training and processing he gets is standard and effective.
Your fee keeps the nearest org alive and functioning and the environment safe.
Anyone who has ever been approached by an IAS reg will find a lot of this eerily familiar. This is exactly what those IAS regges say the money is being spent on. So, one may ask, if this is what the money is being spent on WHY HAVENT THE COST OF SERVICES BEEN REDUCED? And as a side note – IAS funds are ONLY spent when Miscavige wants them spent. Those massive “campaigns” that are announced at the IAS events have a few bucks thrown at them to show at the event, and then they die, and just to dispel another lie that has been repeated forever, the IAS had NOTHING to do with “The Battle of Portland,” NO IAS funds were ever used for legal, PR or Crusade activities.
Instead of pouring the coals on LRH’s purpose and LRH ED 339R by having the correct single finance channel (through orgs) and making it possible for our staffs to live by implementing the appropriate staff pay system, Miscavige diverted and channeled those funds to the IAS, his off-source ideal org strategy or his latest and “greatest” scheme leaving staff destitute and orgs bereft of the energy they so vitally needed.
THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF STAFF
But there was something beyond even that. LRH ED 339R was written FOR STAFF. It gave them the Birthday Game and the target of building their org to the Size of Old St Hill. And something else in 339R was even MORE IMPORTANT.
LRH knew that an average staff member could not attain OT. Even if they received enough staff pay to be able to live, they still would not have enough disposable income to pay for OT levels. And many could not afford to go off to LA or Copenhagen or St Hill for months to do their OT levels – their posts would suffer. He had a brilliant solution – the UNIVERSE CORPS. It made it possible for staff to be real Scientologists and achieve the gains of the OT Levels. LRH ED 339R says that EVERY org that reaches the size of Old St Hill would be rewarded with a Universe Corps sent from Management that would move all staff in the org up to Clear and through the OT Levels. It wasn’t something available to public, it was a reward for the dedication of being a staff member. Right in their own org they would be able to do the OT Levels. This was a massive change. Never before had OT levels been available outside AOs.
But, there was a problem. This required training staff and sending them out to the orgs.
And of those orgs back in the day that were awarded St Hill Size – Tokyo, Orange County, LA Org, Tampa, Hamburg, Munich, Joburg etc. – how many of them do you think have a Universe Corps today? When they were sent (some orgs back then actually had a Universe Corps) they were soon ripped off. Tampa were told that their “Universe Corps” was the FSO!
And today? LRH ED 339R is forgotten. Replaced by Miscavige’s Idle Org strategy. Perfect. Idle Orgs don’t require stats. And certainly don’t require a Universe Corps. They don’t require a Management to recruit and train a Universe Corps. Idle Orgs – Miscavige’s brilliant solution that buries 339R (and the staff along with it) under a pile of PR bullshit. LRH ED 339R is a distant memory, along with the concept that an org is a friendly place where people can find help and like-minded individuals, not just a gathering place for vulture regges waiting to pounce on anyone who walks in the door.
Where has the compassion for people that is the very hallmark of LRH and his technology gone? It’s sure hard to find in the Church of Mestology.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 
Words of wisdom, Lloyd, words of wisdom
Good article, Mike. One thing I’d like to add is that for a year or three right after the IRS settlement, Sea Org staff in PAC were getting audited in the PAC orgs, and making good progress. Then, suddenly, Sea Org members were “ordered” not to be audited by public students. I lost six pcs in the span of three months due to this arbitrary. My guess is that once the IRS inspections ceased, there was no need to pretend that staff were getting “value added” through free student auditing. And thus, slavery was restored.
Can you confirm my hypothesis?
Prediction: there will one day be a staff pay system that mandates at least a minimum wage. But it won’t come through any action of DM’s or Wendell’s or Lyman’s. It will come through the court system that mandates it to relieve itself of being tied up by suits of ex-staff seeking back pay and damages, al a Marc Headley and others now ongoing.
I once did an “unofficial” eval of why staff pay was so low at our Class IV delivery org. Policy at the time (don’t know if it’s changed) was that the amount to be used for staff pay was roughly 30% of gross income, and tech:admin ratio was “supposed” to be 2 admin:1 tech. With one auditor kept busy (but not overworked) by 2 admins at the going rate at the time for auditing, pay for that “three person org” would be quite modest but adequate — no need to starve or moonlight. Problem in our org was that the tech:admin ratio was about 12 admin:1 tech, and tech people were not busy delivering services sold. Pretty obvious why pay was so low.
Later I worked for a “wog” consulting company (delivering “expertise” equivalent in economic terms to scn training or processing) where about 85% to 90% of gross income went for staff pay. We had high-class offices with all the latest office gadgetry, free coffee and other “peon perks.” The per-hour rate charged for services was much less than CoS charged for services; staff at all levels were paid competitively, with good benefits, and the top execs making 6 figures.
Just sayin.
The IAS is Miscaviges personal wallet, a very sizable one. Must compensate for his flaws I geuss.
Hi Mike,
I understand and valid points, but it didn’t start with “COB.”
Mike were you OK with getting $15 a week when you lived on the Apollo? and in CW?
I didn’t smoke so I had money to go out to a restaurant once in a while instead of eating Rooster passed as chicken on the ship. I also got $100 for auditing 50 hrs per week and the admin guys didn’t.
Where did the $ go Mike?
Tell the rest of the story please.
Glenn
Words of wisdom indeed. Dropping the 339R also lets Mestology off the hook in that it was promised that when all orgs reached St Hill size the next OT level would be released. There is no such target with Idle Orgs.
And having the FSO deliver Grades just is another nail on the coffin for Orgs reaching St Hill size as insurance. Thus the upcoming Birthday event is going to be a silly rotten PR joke with 339R gone.
Mike, That is great and for the first time I understand what it is supposed to be. Never made sense before. Always something seemed confusing or wrong!!
Very good analysis, as always, MR.
Orgs would be self-sufficient if they were just allowed to be.
These are the nuts and bolts of the Miscavige modus operandi but what’s its true purpose?
Look don’t listen: Everything he does is intended to halt the expansion of Scientology while pretending to forward it.
Then, when the stats crash, he can blame suppressive INT execs – who are then sent to the gulags for their imagined crimes – and, of course, the planet’s Big SPs, who are always anonymous but VERY powerful.
And, of course, the solution to handling them is … the IAS.
This is the classic tactic of the unethical: manufacture a problem in order to sell your solution.
And the carousel keeps going round and round and round …
My heart goes out to the many staff that I know around the U.S. Many are dedicated and hardworking. They are being exploited and taken advantage of with the dangle of a carrot that they will never be allowed to taste.
I’ve know staff members who have lost their homes, who don’t move on the Bridge and who just want to be allowed to deliver Scientology. Instead they are put on all-hands fundraising, call-in for fundraising events, selling materials etc.
Good people, with good hearts who just want to get others up the Bridge. They deserve so much more.
Wow. DM sure has screwed things up badly. Thanks for that wonderful explanation on how things should be, Mike.
Too true, Mike,; sadly enough it is too true. Talk about dedication and fortitude!
It is not their fault. I have been in these orgs on mission when 11 feet of “management” orders, cross orders, illegal orders and just plain nonsense comes in on the telex on a daily basis.
It is just suppressive mumble-jumble: “Execute the call-in program immediately and now, for blood!” On the same telex run real specific orders like: “Drop everything and slam in LRH ED 339R and get your org on purpose!” And let’s not forget: “Get everyone in the org to to spend 10 hours per day getting the Basics Books Quota of 50 packages sold TODAY!”
The ED looks around and tries to figure out how to have his three staff: Supervisor, Auditor and, of course the D/FBO MORE/bookstore officer to get all this done, DAILY. His GI is $200 on a Tuesday while his C/GI is minus $4,500.. OMG you just want to cry standing in one of these orgs when you know it is management causing all of this. And you know it is being done on purpose.
My hat is always off to staff. Always.
As someone who was a Cl V org staff member for over twenty years, I can verify that the above is totally true. My goal was to be a full-time Scientologist and support myself financially while doing only that, not working other jobs just so I could eat.
Never happened. Never could happen. Because there was always some new arbitrary that would appear that would stop any successful action.
I was told in 2004 about the “new pay system COB had introduced” that was supposedly giving staff so much pay that some felt out-exchange. The Snr C/S Sydney was trying to recruit me back to staff at the time and gave me this spiel about how DM had been in Milano and asked the CO why staff weren’t staying and she said that the pay wasn’t enough. So He altered it so staff were now getting good money – come back on staff, Paul!
I politely declined, saying I was contracted to Narconon. Privately I gave it six months at the most before they were poverty-stricken yet again (but didn’t tell her that.)
Sad to say I was right.
But then again, if staff had enough money that they had time for other dynamics too, maybe they’d spend time on the Net looking at subjects like Scientology? Or visiting family members who use Google?
Best avoid any chances of that happening, eh? Keep ’em in poverty so they never look up from what they are doing.
Yes folks, I am still bitter about the deception. I worked hard to become the best staff member I could (I ended up completing a total of 76 courses – mostly in my own study time while being staff) so that I could help. Mostly before the GAT, of course – that killed staff study dead.
So thanks for this write-up, Mike. It fills in a few gaps in a few dark places for me.
I remember seeing DM walking past the canteen at Saint Hill back in ’84 and wondering who the F… that was, such an arrogance about him. I was only a kid but I knew Yager and Guilleme and Heber. They were all there for the formation of the IAS of course and boy did I get to find out who DM was in later years… but I digress.
I post simply to say that I truly believe Mr. Rinder has hit the nail on the head here.
The IAS.
I remember looking at that card in my wallet and thinking why do I need a plastic card? Never mind a pin, plaque, etc, etc.
And war chest? Interesting choice of words no?
The IAS is the proverbial wood for the trees.
KSW,
Having supported a local org staff member now for many years, after having been on staff myself for decades, I can attest to the truth of every word of this.
A fully trained auditor who does the required WDAH to make bonus makes about $100/week at best in a local Class V org nowadays. That is about 30% of the minumin wage rate, which in itself is below poverty level.
And one more thing — again first hand testimony — auditors now get book sales quotas and get chitted if they do not make it. Of course they have to come off post to make the quotas. You can’t sell books and audit at the same time. Testimony to what “dm intention” is, to which all the priorities are then aligned.
Of course, it does not take a lot of “Management” to set book sale quotas for every staff member and then enforce compliance to this new “Org Program Number 1”. No Exec Strata, no real ILO, no FLO and no fully manned WDC, no LRH Comm NW, no FR NW, no KoT NW, is needed to manage that program. Just a bunch of young RCTBlackshirts and a lot of sec checkers, that’s all it takes to instill the level of fear required for auditors to come off post and be more concerned about their book sale quotas than setting their PCs free.
Oh those good old days, of decades past now, when LRH intention = Command Intention = KSW!!
Will 339R be reissued as 339DMd — as in 339-DooMed? I wonder?
Thanks Mike.
Mike, This was well written and shows Real LRH
intention. It reminds me of a little story. Once
at WHQ before the ‘Rainbow’ faded, a bunkhouse was built to house an influx of people. The Old Man came down to inspect the
building. Don’t know just why I was included in
the group, but there was the Old Man, Diana
and a few messengers. Diana told her ‘Penny
Doubled’ theory and the Old Man said to all.
(not a quote) while looking at the bunkhouse, soon we will all have new houses,
new cars and go fishing. Then he laughed and
and said carry on.
I was around to see the 2004 Staff Pay System implementation. No, it did not work. Just because you change the allocation form and the point system to determine your pay doesn’t change the fact that the orgs were small and failing. It didn’t change the fact that the orgs weren’t making much money or delivering. Some weeks pay was as little as $30 – 40 for an exec, good weeks you got $150 – 200. It’s impossible to survive on that. Which is why the majority of staff in this particular org (and a few others I’ve seen) are women who are supported by their husbands, or teenagers who live with their parents. They’re the only ones who can afford to be on staff without moonlighting.
Between the IAS and Idle Org fundraisers, it’s remarkable the orgs were/are bringing in any money for actual, exchangeable services. One good example is a Class V org that mortgaged it’s new building and now had a $10,000 mortgage payment on top of their rent every month and for a long time this wasn’t covered by the building donations. They had to figure out an additional $30,000 income to cover that $10,000 (after the income has gone through the allocation form, you end up with about 30% that you can spend freely). They are still not in that new building, nor are the renovations happening. It’s been sitting there empty for 7 years now. 7 YEARS.
As far as the Universe Corps, last I heard (and this was 4 – 5 years ago) Milano Org was the only UC team in an org actually delivering to staff. I don’t know if they were actually delivering OT levels though. Seeing as most staff don’t go in session, there are very few Clears or OTs. Leaving everyone else in need of a great deal of Grade Chart before being anywhere near ready for OT levels turning the UC team into a group of glorified Staff Staff Auditors. Staff need to get up the Bridge, but if there isn’t anyone auditing the staff, the UC team will be so busy doing Grades, NED and preps that it’ll be years before a good percentage of the staff actually get anywhere near their OT levels. A 6 person team isn’t going to Clear an entire org over night.
P.S.
And, no I did not misspell RTC by calling it RCT, in case you wondered. Obviously what once was the Religious Technology Center (RTC), set up by LRH to ensure we practice KSW at all levels, has now ben turned by “dear leader” into the Reprogramming and Coercion Tro0p (RCT).
A subject near and dear to my heart. One thing not mentioned in regards Staff Pay.. what about the entire FP being taken to fund the latest mandatory Int Event, or should I say DM’s Dog and Pony shows. This was pretty much a regular occurance. Forget paying rent or basics – staff pay, what was that? There was a Command Intention Event to be financed!
Absolutely brilliant Mike.
I was an executive in a Class V org for Miscavige’s so called “new staff pay system” issued in 2004 with instructions to get it implemented or else. It was bizarre, made no sense at all and resulted in no extra money to pay the staff. All it did was take money from certain staff and redistribute it to others within the organization based on a rhyme and reason known only to Miscavige.
This new pay system was devised personally by Miscavige? Well, it was a total overt product and actually blocked the LRH intention of making orgs more attractive to work in.
Mike,
Your respect of and dedication to 100% Standard Technical application of Administrative Tech is very much appreciated by us all. I bet a lot of us wish you could be in charge of a standard LRH church management organization.
I agree that the IAS is not necessary.
Thank you for your continual input. And thank you Marty for this forum, once again.
Centurion (plain variety)
As y’all know, I used to be staff at OC. At peak, there were sustainably 200 staff when we reached St. Hill Size at the end of 1988, and we not only had the 1451 Irvine Blvd location in its entirety, but also rented out space in the building across the street.
This was up from the staff when we became an org in 1983 (I’m not in this photo as I re-joined staff in 1984):
So expansion, right?
Now, at 12:28 pm. on 1/16 of this year, a time when normally one would have to park a block away, this was the parking lot:
That’s all one needs to say, really.
I gather the img tag isn’t supported in comments, so here’s the links instead:
OC Staff, 1983
1/16/2010 Parking lot
When I left OC in ’89, we were supposed to get a Universe Corps team Real Soon Now. I don’t know if it ever happened.
I always thought that book commissions should be split: a small part paid to the person who sold the books, and the remainder added to the pay sum.
Just as the staff as a whole benefitted from the regges getting more GI, so should they benefit from the book sales.
Silvia Kusuda’s blog recently mentioned that book commissions were done away with completely. Was that part of the 2004 changes?
This is the first I’ve heard of either the 2004 pay system or the end of the book commissions.
Thanks Mike…
Real Theta ack!
Diedre the picture didn’t go through.
Mike,
Good article!
However, allow me to give you some further background from my own personal experience and the fact that it wasn’t just Miscavige.
In fact as a non-SO at AOLA during the mid to late ’80’s we were payed on a bonus scale based on an SOED entitled ‘Low Pay High Bonuses’.
Yet despite the fact that like the SO members working there we worked our butts off getting high hours in the HGC and other tech and qual actions.
Many of the SO staff resented us because we were making a living applying Scientology!
There seemed to be a general consensus or agreement back then that you either moonlighted if you were staff at a Class IV org or joined the Sea Org and lived on a small stipend!
In fact I was a staff member of a Class IV Org when the Org was paying auditor bonuses for auditing over 25 hours a week on a pay system the had been fully approved and encouraged by the CLO, until some exec at the org decided we were being payed too much and put us all back on units, forcing all the technical staff there to now moonlight like everyone else!
Regarding the Universe Corp, I was in LA when the New World Corp and the Universe Corp where established at the Complex.
At that time the only org that was restricted to SO Only was the UC since it delivered NOTs. So many of the technical staff at NWC, the SO Orgs in the PAC area and even the Exec 40 quals unit were Non-SO.
Also a lot of the programmers for INCOM were also Non-SO as well(who were actually getting paid more for their expertise than those of us who merely toiled in the vineyards of tech and qual!) until the early ’90’s when they decided to purge all Non-SO staff or force them to sign a SO contract!
Needless to say the possibility of getting a lousy 50 bucks a week maybe, living at the rat infested HI or the constantly being continually renovated by the RPF main building and possibly living on nothing but rice and beans wasn’t all that appealing and besides many of us weren’t SO Qualled anyway so we took our pink slips and headed for the nearest Franchise or tried to get a field practice going or bit the bullet and got a “wog job” at some “Scientology” company run by some criminal with “Patron” status who made the Bounty look like a pleasure cruise!
After this Universe Corp was totally gutted of personnel who were transfered to other SO Orgs in the PAC area, which was sad because all of them signed up with UC so that they could audit staff members.
Not only that but they wiped out NWC which was still in the process of piloting the various Super Power rundowns and the ‘Cause Resurgence RD’ or what we called the ‘Running Program’ and INCOM became a ghost town.
This was before Miscavige put the pedal to the metal after the “Secret Closing Agreement” and in concurrence with his “friends” began to go full throttle on soliciting “tax free donations” which I suspect is actually a money laundering operation which has the full consent and approval of his Uncle Sam and probably why Miscavige is a “protected asset”.
However, IMHO the icing on the cake, which only looks like chocolate, was the release of GAT code named the “Golden Age of Tech” but in reality a project designed to subvert and sabotage the actual tech, which has been extremely successful in achieving its goal!
So now with the tech eliminated as a “distraction”. Miscavige and his “friends” concentrated on turning the Church into a money regging machine telling the faithful left that the reason Scientology is failing is because of the lack of “Ideal Orgs” and “SPs” such as ourselves that is preventing Scientology from “clearing the planet”!
Personally, I figure there will be another year of him creating this Potemkin Village for the remaining “Scientologists” before the green curtain is pulled aside and the wizard is revealed for what he actually is.
From recent intel just received by someone who has a finger on the pulse in the LA area 95% percent of the public are now considered “disaffected” which aligns with what Jeff wrote in his blog ‘Leaving Scientology’ about the poor showing at “mandatory” OT events.
Time to head back to Kansas!
Whoops, nevermind. Stunning, thanks.
Some questions for those of you in the know…
1. How much do staffers get paid? Does it vary from org to org, and country to country?
2. Do tech staff get paid more than admin staff or vice versa?
3. How does the wage compare with national minimum or average wages? – I see one person posted that it was about 30% of the minimum wage (US I guess).
4. Is pay indexed in anyway to inflation? Have there been rises over the years or is the amount so random that it’s hard to tell?
5. Do single people get paid the same as married, or people with children?
6. Is there healthcare, death or disability insurance, holiday pay? Is there maternity leave?
(I suspect question(s) 6 are going to make me something of a laughing stock … be gentle, I never worked for the Church.)
David
Glenn,
At that time there was no IAS and we were under government attacks in Australia, NZ, Africa, Germany, England and the US. So a lot went into defense.
Plus do the math — $15 then and $15 now ! $15 is all the SO guys are getting now. That is barely enough to buy toothpaste, laundry (yes, that is not free in the ILO) and toilette paper every week . Doesn’t even pay for a cup of coffee per day.
US, Orange County here, 1984-1989:
1. When I started, average pay was around $110/week and went up closer to $175. Which is enormous for most orgs, apparently. Some weeks, we got $0, but that was typically only 1-2x/year.
2. The highest paid people were regges and people who sold a lot of books as they operated on commission. In general, after that, top execs and auditors made the most.
3. Minimum wage at the time was $3.35/hr, so a typical staffer working our schedule (9 a.m. – 10 p.m. M-F and 9-6 either Sat or Sun) would be working 60.5 hours per week, which would come out to $202.25. In 1988, the minimum wage was changed to $4.25, or $257.13 per week. Since enhancement was required, that really should count as “work” hours, thus I didn’t exclude the theoretical 12.5 hours/week.
4. No. It’s random week to week.
5. Yes.
6. No. OC tried to institute it, but because there was no LRH policy requiring it, we were disallowed from doing so.
“Idle Orgs – Miscavige’s brilliant solution that buries 339R (and the staff along with it) under a pile of PR bullshit.”
Bravo! Say it like it is Mike!
Let’s add freeloader bill insult to buried staff injury.
Should a staff member dare to leave staff and build his life from scratch (with no life and no money) now he is faced with the possibility of an SP declare for ‘betraying his group’ and a neat bill make sure he fully understands that in actuality he has been a self-serving criminal and not a dedicated staff member. Half the time the freeloader bill isn’t even for Bridge progress but for the many sec-checks he has somehow needed during his tenure on staff.
Disgusting.
David,
1) $0 to $100/week on average.
2) Its a Unit system. Different posts, different units but the above is the average across the boards. Hayden will be able to give real life UK examples.
3) %30 or less of minimum age in the US
4)No
5)No
6)No ………and yes, that question cracks me up
Sorry Boyd, put it in my reply to my post.
Mike didn’t have the time to read the whole thing and the comments since it’s a bit late here. Doing other things as well.
But I wanted to let you know that this blog is SO important to us all that we now have a cyber org guys. A forum, a very sane and safe one.
Thanks I will be back in the morning guys. Couldn’t help to say hi and thanks Mike.
Here’s the kicker:
I was fired out of CLOUK back in the day (early ’90s) on a number of Ethics Missions to get the staff in the Class V Orgs to quit ‘moonlighting’ and work on staff full time. These ‘Class V Orgs’ generally consisted of 3 or 4 staff members and were smaller than missions. We knew it was a joke even as we sat infront of incredulous EDs, who to their credit, generally had infinite patience and TRs when dealing with our idiotic demands. I think a few of them (especially the weary old timers) actually found the whole thing amusing.
I should add that, when I left OC at the end of 1980 when it was still a mission, average staff pay was around $70 a week. So the growth in the interim plus the additional revenue possibilities of an org meant, effectively, $40 more a week.
David
Sea Org wages at CLOUK throughout ’89 – ’91 averaged £10 per week. One week out of two we wouldn’t get paid at all as we ‘hadn’t made enough money’. When we couldn’t afford beans and rice our meals became dry oatmeal with powdered milk mixed with water. I used to raid the public canteen late at night for leftovers and pick apples from the orchard on the Manor grounds. If I got desperate I would steal food.
And no, I’m not exaggerating.
As a Fully Hatted FBO, Treas. Sec., and Dissem Sec, with extensive experience on each of these post for many years, I can attest that the extent of Financial Irregularities in the Church of Miscavage is nearly total!
I was on senior finance lines when LRH wrote and developed the Finance Series in the 70s. His primary intention was, a pointed out by Mike, to generate income, solely and only, from sale and delivery of Training and auditing. Per LRH policy a “donation” means a payment made toward SERVICES on the Grade Chart.
I have two kids who were born in the SO. They have worked there, in senior positions, for there entire lives. Now they are both in their 30s. Neither one has ever moved up either side of the Grade Chart past Grade 0.
There is no sign that they, or any other staff member, ever will. However, they work 120 hour weeks!
The saddest thing to me is that staff members still think they are working for LRH….they think that they are doing Scientology. They are so deeply submerged in the insidious DM bullshit machine they couldn’t spot an outpoint if you smashed them in the forehead with it!
I have recently become aware of the material posted on the excellent website FRIENDSOFLRH.ORG. The site demonstrates an excellent contrast between LRH policy and DM squirrel practices. I am in the process of e-mailing this material to everyone I know who is has not been awakened to the fact the Scientology has been hijacked by an SP.
I recommend this as a tool for exposing the truth.
David,
1. As an exec in a Cl V org I averaged between 100 – 150 US/wk. It was a unit pay system based on Gross Income, minus Bills. Additionally there were book commissions, reg bonuses, hiring bonuses and auditor bonuses while I was on staff but that seems to have been eliminated per an earlier poster.
2. Generally yes, with exception to execs and reges.
3. Our minimum wage was quite high and the comparison of basic staff pay was much less than 30% of minimum.
4. None at all.
5. Pay based on training, post and production, marrital status and children are not entered in at all.
6. No, no, no, holidays are not recognized in reference to pay. I believe maternity was given but not in the same sense that it is in the real world. Outside of the church there are very specific laws regarding maternity leave. I am not sure if they also apply to the church but I doubt they are fully practiced.
I won’t laugh, these are all things one would expect to inquire about if one is pursuing a job. I always considered being on staff somewhat like a religious calling. I was able to be on staff because I owned a home and rented out rooms for income. I had no debt and my staff pay was essentially food and gas.
In order to keep my integrity in, I would always tell prospective staff members that the pay is very nominal and it would be best to look at staff as a volunteer position. If one has financial support elsewhere, then there will never be a problem. Someone earlier posted a lot of staff were women with husbands who supported them and young adults who lived at with their parents. While this was true to a large degree, many of our staff were self supporters or had a spouse who worked part time staff and had a full time job to cover the bills. We had about 100 staff and 40% of them were full time (8:30 am -10:30 pm).
What is also suppressive about the current staff pay system is that tech personnel are paid significantly less than most of the admin personnel in the org. A Snr C/S, the highest technical post in the org, was paid less than most of the posted staff in the org, even if highly trained. But everybody was paid less than minimum wage, sometimes nothing that particular week.
PS
I recall (quite fondly now I suppose) washing my uniform in the bathtub with a bar of soap because we didn’t have money for the launderette. What was I thinking?!!!
When I was on the Apollo, all staff got auditing and were moving up the bridge. I did my lower bridge up through OTIII! Training happened everyday. So there was an exchange, not a lot of money, but enough to buy cigs and go out now and then.
Thanks Mike.
I always wondered what the real reason was for the formation of the IAS.
Interesting to see that LRH’s intention was condition 4 exchange with staff. The birthday game was always fun and purposeful.
DM’s intention is that of a criminal, get someting for nothing and sadly, it is the staff and public who are enabling him.
“THE CANCER OF THE IAS
There is a second problem with staff pay: the takeover and dominance of Scientology by the IAS and the proliferation of building and library donations. ”
While this does hold very true, there’s another interesting aspect to this (that I observed).
I remember back in 2007 (or 2008?), the Atkinson-Baker family gave $1.2 million to the IAS. It was a big deal in LA org at the time, since Sheila Atkinson-Baker is on staff at LA Foundation. Thus LA Org got the commission on that $1.2 million. Every staff member got $400+ in pay that week (as opposed to $50 or lower).
After that, I noticed a trend where LA Org staff members were basically told, “We need to fundraise $XXX for the IAS or else we won’t be able to pay the water bill.” or “We need to sell XXX library packages to be upstat this week.” THIS is the type of stuff I’d actually overhear as a public…not stuff like, “Let’s reg $XXX of services this week!”
Since LA org was able to make a similar commission from IAS donations or Library donations, the question was….why reg people for the Bridge? Why reg people for the Bridge when 1 big IAS donation or 1 big Library donation makes so much more money for the org? It’s gross.
But the other interesting aspect to this is that Reg’s sometimes came from ILO and would literally “partner” with the org (in my case, LA Org) and would reg people…and whatever $$ was donated (towards IAS or Libraries) would be split between ILO and LA org.
So you have someone who would be paying $1,000 towards their own Bridge…end up donating $1,000 towards the IAS and LA Org getting a commission on $500 of that money.
So on one hand, the Org loses money but on the other hand, they still do get a commission which motivates them to work harder, regging their own public for IAS and Library donations.
I wanted to also add that is a great title to this article “Neglected Heros.” I remember after the 14 years of staff and being given numerous ethics handlings, justice and sec checking over not wanting to re-sign another contract and feeling a lot of guilt, then a good friend said “Hell they should be giving you an award and putting you in the Hall of Fame for all the work you did for them.” That was a right indication.
“The Cancer of the IAS”-
There is another point here that may not be known regarding IAS regging.
IAS registrars’ quotas kept increasing. So what did they do? They started regging the staff.
In 2001 I happened to be in London at an IAS event and to make the quota the London Foundation staff were heavily regged. Ken Pirak was at the event and threatening the CLO execs and London Execs as the quota was not being met. So the solution was to reg the staff to make the quota!
I knew some of the staff personally and they were put into huge debt which put them under heavy financial stress . So now they were working their day job to pay the debt back and being regged in the evening by the IAS registrars as a “successful action”.
I would not allow this to occur in my org — I pointed to the LRH policy on regging staff. Then in 2004 when the “new” pay system came out I was told it was personally worked out by DM and I had better follow it. Part of the pay system had a commission going to staff pay for any IAS donations. So now the IAS used this to try and reg my staff. Bonkers!
Before I left in 2005 80% of my staff did not moonlight. Now in BHM 95% moonlight. The D/ED paid for her patron and then went into huge financial catastrophe and her and her husband (the HAS) run a sandwhich shop outside the org to try and make ends meet. The PES is a cleaning lady now for local public!
Disgraceful.
Shocking photo Deirdre. I remember in the 1990s at OC, anytime day or night it was hard to find parking because so many people were there. Now the OC parking lot looks like the parking lot at the Sandcastle…
Great article Mike as per usual. I remember when I first went up “over the rainbow” in 1984. I was fresh out of a Class IV org in Austin and so the situation with staff pay was very real to me. I supported myself with a part time job where I made a lot of money in a short amount of time. At Int, in the summer of 1984, I was astonished to find out how much money was going to CMOI and to RTC every week. CMOI was putting in a new reception — and spent more than $10K on it as I recall. I remember standing there stunned trying to imagine what it would be like in Austin to have an extra $10K to spend on a new reception. In Austin Org, if there was a single roll of toilet paper in the public bathrooms it was a miracle. Forget about paper towels to dry you hands. That’s what your pants were for.
Staff pay was so low I counted the change in the envelop to make sure I got everything I was owed.
I remember one week when some drifter was hired to hold reception. No one told him about staff pay. At the end of the week, when he got his $12 he was so angry I thought he was going to murder someone.
Meanwhile, CMOI and RTC were literally fat with money.
Glenn, I think the gist of what Mike is saying is that LRH recognized the low staff pay in the 70s and, by the late 70s, was prodding church leadership to come up with a solution to the “low staff pay”.
And even after 1993 (once the IRS was off the CoS’ back), Miscavige still didn’t allow a workable solution to be implemented. And on top of that, Miscavige didn’t allow the IAS to be disbanded … which would have freed up lots of money from the field for local org training and auditing.
POT – Sorry I cant confirm this hypothesis, I dont know that there was any relationship between the two. I think it was more likely along the lines of another bizarre arbitrary entered by Miscavige that org staff were not allowed to “comingle” i.e. staff from one org were not allowed to associate with staff from any other org — especially from different echelons. I think he had the idea the lower orgs would “pollute” the staff of the upper orgs or something. Probably the same theory with staff being audited by public.
Glenn,
Nice to hear from you.
Honestly, I didnt have a problem with the pay on the Apollo or at the FSO. The point of my article wasnt really about SO members who all at least have somewhere to live and some form of food to eat (not always real good mind you).
Mike
Astute observations Huck
Couldnt agree with you more Natalie.
LOL Thoughtful! Hilarious about the drifter…
Amen Mike. Amen!
Idle Org
Mike,
You have struck a nerve here. I and my husband have been on staff for years and I can verify this to be totally true.
In addition, now that the out exchange gravy train reg machine has gone into full gear, the all hands regging keeps staff off post with little service delivered creating islands of off-purpose enturbulated mush so that the orgs cannot survive without asking for donos for regular operating expenses.
Why should the public have to pay for the rental space at the monthly book-a-thon? Why should the public have to pay for a staff member to go to England for the IAS event? Why should the public have to pay for the event halls? Why should the org have to pay for event halls almost every month for that matter? The list could go on and on. It’s all so off purpose and out of control to obviously be the intent of an SP. It’s OBVIOUS.
The staff have no idea that 339R in no longer being taken seriously and that they will not get the Universe Corps. This is not a known concept.
The staff are heroes but they need to wake up.
I say put Mike, Haydn and his wife Lucy in charge of the Church (and you too Marty and Dan K., if you’re up for it), and we’d have a pretty good start to a church management team.
T — Thanks. You have touched upon an aspect of these events that has not really been mentioned. Everyone knows those events are vanity productions to keep DM in the limelight and give him an opportunity to spout bs and get standing ovations from the adoring crowds, but the financial pressure put on orgs isnt often mentioned. But it is VERY real.
Ask anyone in the UK what happens to org finances around IAS event time each year. They are decimated. Same in PAC.
These events are forbidden by LRH policy, but DM isnt going to change them as they are his creation!
Haydn. Miscavige made a big deal out of how he had done this personally (a lie like most of the other things he claims he did single-handedly) but he wants the credit, he can take the blme. In fact, he had videos shot of his “briefings” and then made all management staff and a lot of org staff watch them.
it’s probably more. i’m considered “in good standing” but i’m definitely one of the “dissafected” ones. how does your source get that percentage?
When I worked at a Class IV Org in the mid-80s in the Northeast USA, we were lucky to get $20/week. Most weeks we got nothing. I was on staff for 2.5 years (and moonlighted the whole time), and this was pretty consistent from 1984-1987. If we sold books, we got a 15% commission, but in general only the reg’es who sold books along with courses and/or training got the bulk of the commissions.
Sam you are right. Though these days it seems like they are so desperate to keep people from “disaffecting” they slash freeloader bills to nothing if you tell them you are going to look at the internet! I guess Marty’s blog and others have had some effect on the activities of the Thought Police…
Hear hear!!!!
This answers a question I never could answer in all my years on lines at orgs: Why do so few staff ever progress up the bridge, and why do they, the hardest working people I know, live in near destitution?
All that dedication, long hours and just plain proximity to the bridge, and yet no bridge progress to speak of (there were exceptions, but they were noteworthy AS exceptions). All that wonderful admin tech (sure to boom any organization), and yet most every staff member I knew was barely scraping by, often in debt, driving an old beater car. living with several roommates in shabby digs, and often in need of new shoes. And most had to moonlight to get by. Couples who were both on staff were often as poor as proverbial church mice. And when there were children involved it got so much worse. Again, there were exceptions, but there was enough staff poverty to create a stereotype in the minds of most public.
Yet I don’t ever remember a single staff member at my org who dramatized this. I recall only dedicated, proud and hard-working individuals who, while aware of their financial hardships, refused to be defined by them. It only made me feel they deserved a decent wage even more.
I once told a c/s and OT at a Class V org that the reason I hadn’t signed a staff contract at an org (I had been a volunteer for a time) was that I had observed that staff didn’t go up the bridge, and that I wanted to do my OT levels. I was told that what I had just said was “enemy line.”
Clearly, someone WAS an enemy to so many good staff ever getting their bridges, but wasn’t me.
Lucy,
The level of insanity never ceases to amaze me. Thanks for this additional info. This blog truly offers a multiple viewpoint system that brings a lot of clarity and a host of invaluable information to the forefront.
These are good questions Dave.
Actually I did time (kinda like a prison sentence) in a Financial Planning Committee for a major Org (at least it was back then, now its about the size of a small Field Group) back in the late 70’s early ’80’s.
1. How much do staffers get paid? Does it vary from org to org, and country to country?
They were payed on what was called a proportionate pay plan derived from what was called the salary sum which was a percentage of the Corrected Gross Income.
The proportion of income a staff member was based on several factors 1) Training Level 2) Processing Level 3) Post 4) Hatting.
So staff pay varied from week to week. Unless you happened to be in the few orgs that were in Power and had a steady consistent Gross Income.
On the other hand Sea Org Orgs that allowed Non-SO to work there which was supposed to be all service orgs with the exception of the FSO, according to Flag Orders paid us an hourly rate usually $5.00-$20.00 per hour depending on your level of training plus a gradated bonus system based on an SOED called ‘Low Pay High Bonuses’.
Sea Org as you know got $50.00 a week and bonuses. However they had their room and board payed for.
This was back then when things were done mostly according to policies and directives that were either written or at least approved by the Ol’man.
2. Do tech staff get paid more than admin staff or vice versa?
For the most part.
However, most tech staff worked longer hours than most admin staff, since it took more than 40 hrs a week in study, cramming and programming folders to produce 40 Well Done Auditing Hours.
3. How does the wage compare with national minimum or average wages? – I see one person posted that it was about 30% of the minimum wage (US I guess).
Right now I don’t think there is an Org in the US where their staff are earning anything close to minimum wage.
What with all the out tech and off policy!
4. Is pay indexed in anyway to inflation? Have there been rises over the years or is the amount so random that it’s hard to tell?
Well there was an effort to increase staff wages by incrementally increasing the price of service but it went way beyond what the public were willing to pay!
5. Do single people get paid the same as married, or people with children?
There were nothing in the salary sum calculations to include whether the person was single, married, had children.
6. Is there healthcare, death or disability insurance, holiday pay? Is there maternity leave?
There was a Christmas bonus which was 20% of all GI earned in a certain period which could get hefty.
At ASHO once my Christmas bonus was over $500.00.
Sea Org members got a big bonus on Sea Org Day which was based on how many years they were SO members.
Plus there were other bonuses for high production as noted earlier.
Nothing for any other holidays though.
(I suspect question(s) 6 are going to make me something of a laughing stock … be gentle, I never worked for the Church.)
Never Dave.
All the above were valid questions
Also back in the day we used to be payed in cash at the end of the week which I thought was way cool because it was nice havingness 🙂
Near the end they started paying us by Check before that stopped paying us at all but that’s another story!
Nothing scientific just the number of people he’s talked to that have a lowered affinity for the Org and a lower tolerance Miscavige’s scams and who are more openly critical about what is going on.
It’s getting pretty close to one for one.
Old Cuff,
That friendsoflrh site is killer. Just the facts, time, place, it’s all there. Well done on getting it broadly known. Now, we gotta get your kids moving on the Bridge!
Cheers mate.
I am glad the truth is coming out. Many public wondered and many public knew what they knew. You could just look around at the staff and the vehicles that were broken down in the back of the org and the fact that 2 or more families were living in one bedroom apartments with their children and know there was no decent money being paid to these people. This whole thing is so obnoxious.
I would ask FSO terminals I knew where was all the money they were regging going and no one I spoke with could ever answer. If this question was pushed you then became the target.
Thanks Mike for posting this as it just may open the eyes of many who have for whatever reason not wanted to look.
Mike,
With this data from the posters coming up, it’s apparent the IAS may very well be the most destructive external influence in the history of Class IV/V orgs.
This is bigger than a Sherman Tank. This is huge.
I constantly get phone calls from Marc Bosserman, LA Org DED, to reg for IAS. Though I like Marc, I always wonder, “Don’t you have more important things to do — such as running the org?”
In addition to staff members being off-post to reg for all kind of illegal projects, I also see that the tech quality of the org has fallen – both training and auditing.
Here is the LRH that could explain what is happening:
“Academy enrollment has very little to do with the Registrar.
It has everything to do with the quality of the Academy.
Sounds awfully funny. A bad Academy empties almost at once.
There’s no new enrollments in a badly run Academy.
A good Academy mysteriously picks up a lot of enrollments.”
“If the HGC drops in quality it takes 6 or 7 months to go down the drain as far as income and pcs are concerned, and it takes another 6 or 7 months to pick up again.
This is not true about the Academy. It will do it in a week. It’s just one of the most sudden things you’d want to see happen.”
HCO PL 17 September 1962R
An Arrangement of the Academy
And of course, with the out-tech going on in the auditor training checksheets and the public not even allowed to train ( having so many arbitraries on it that is preventing people from actually getting training as an auditor) the Academy just empties out.
Also, staff members are not getting the help/training/hatting they need – after the GAT, it is literally the blind leading the blind.
At LA Org, I am now getting phone calls about the Dianetics Seminar.
They built a tent outside the org for the seminar.
And of course, they are asking anybody and everybody to come – even if someone has already done the Dianetics Seminar courses.
Very soon, we will hear at some event that “auditing stats went up the roof”
The fact is that in the world of Mestology there is no “hook” connected with a promise. Thats why it has been collecting for and promising Super Power and OT 9 & 10 since 1986.
I just talked to some public (now ex-public) over the weekend from the Seattle church. There is a 7 man Sea Org team in the org pushing “ideal org”. You’ll never guess what the bullshit PR line is that they are pushing – here it is:
All the churches are going to be “ideal orgs” this year.
The next year they will all be Saint Hill size and at that point OT 9 & 10 will be released.
Mestology has the moral code of a criminal reg
– say and promise ANYTHING to get the MONEY.
The “disaffected public” stat must be pretty high. A few days ago I posted here what a very connected church member on the West Coast told me a few weeks ago: “Everybody is sick of Miscavige and donations.”
I think RJ’s right — public are getting comfortable being “openly critical.”
Just Me
At ASHO SHSBC students on Level O were auditing staff on checksheet requirements just a few years back. I did so in about 2004 or 2005. Then it came down “Only SO would audit SO, no more public students allowed to do so.” My take on it was that it was partly a PR issue. It was common to do Tailor Made Sec Checks and the OWs were sometimes out PR for PUBLIC to hear. Also it was felt that SO pcs would feel it acceptable to withhold OWs to “protect” the SO image – thus keeping them from truly being in session. Another factor was “altitude”. The very green BC student auditor (many who never did Academy training) was sometimes cowed by having to take in some mid-level exec. I can understand all this but the horrible thing is that “image” has become the greatest importance in the Cof$ – moreso than facilitating case gain by getting as many people in session as possible. It did happen after this that a big effort to get SO staff co-auditing developed. For some time (a few months?) it seemed to be going pretty strong (at least I saw a LOT of objectives being run and run and run.) But this was just before the Basics came out and I don’t know if this continued or what the current scene is. I did know long-time staff through OT V and ready for VI and VII that were stopped cold. That seemed unacceptable, especially since both ASHOs had gone St Hill size several years before. Yeah… what Universe Corps??
Look at those faces! When was the last time you saw such naturely happy, extroverted faces. Such confidence and cheerful dedication. Any one of those folks would be willing to listen to anything I had to say..about anything.
For those not around during those days – You are looking at a real Church of Scientology! And staff who got real products.
DM, this is for you; when was th last time ANYone looked upon you with sucn open and easy friendliness. Not for long, I’d think.
Deirdre, thank you so much for sharing that photo. It was good to look at John Woodruff, a hero of mine.
Wow Mike !!
Your articles keep getting better and better.
This one was hard for me to confront it is so evil of a situation. That a person could be so greedy or whatever and let so many well intentioned staff ( I include Sea Org in that too) go so underpaid is sick on many levels. The amount of pain and suffering I have cross-flowed over the years from this off policy crap is staggering.
This is one area that if handled could actually boom Scientology (If they handled all points you mention). WHY WON”T HE ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN? I guess I know the answer but as I said earlier it is hard to confornt that kind of evil.
Thanks for the observations Mike I really appreciate it. I have had different thoughts like this for years and would always get PR mumbo-jumbo. It is great to hear real truth and intelligent evaluations for a change.
Alex
Imagine how succesfull your children would be working half that many hours in a normal job.
Hi Mr. Rinder,
Great article about Ron’s intention on staff pay.
Also nice to hear other old-timers talk about how caring Ron was.
I have some observations’s:
I remember in the early nineties, right after I became a class V, I was auditing SO members all the time. At the complex as well as the HGB. Usually for set ups such as the KTL evolutions etc. In any case a public like me was walking in an out of the HGB like it was my home. (Met you several times in the hallway Mr. Rinder )
I loved it. The helping part as well as the getting experience part. Able to contribute and being appreciated was still in vogue back then.
But rather than the low pay (which as you and other mentioned is not the real issue) I always have wondered why so many SO members do jobs which do not need SCN training.
LRH wrote somewhere (no clue where) that “we are getting to big and to wide spread and we should have non scientologists doing any job which does not require SCN training.”(Obviously not verbatim)
Now, this to me makes a lot of sense as I find it a waist and betrayal to have that girl/boy doing manual labor work- wash in dishes, doing beds etc. for decades for $ 50 a week and NOT moving up the bridge.
My own story how I met SCN.
I was hired away from the Hilton Hotel form a director position to help establishing the manor restaurant. (the “renascence restaurant” was the name I gave the place as it had non before)
So, I was a Non scientologist & fought with management even then, and was told by a mission to be declared, till they found out I am not even a scientologist. It was funny.
But saw something in the auditing thing-left the manor, (well, got drown out actually) became an auditor and never looked back.
The moral of the story, having non scientologist doing work which does NOT require SCN training ,(as Ron suggests) would get “real” SO members trained and up the bridge which they need to be ,besides deserving it, and – well – looking at my own example – make scientologists !
And trust me, if hired correctly those NON SCN would be more effective as I have proven at the Manor. Not because I am better, but because i was hated for what I was doing-that is all.
I don’t k now, but looks to me that sometimes – only sometimes – we should do what Ron says !
I surely am glad someone (properly by mistake) was on PL when hiring me:):)
Love Helmut
Yes! Friendsoflrh was one of the first sites I went to in my 2 month long re-awakening. I read e/g on the site from “cover to cover”. Couldn’t help myself as so much icy cold LRH truth poured over me. A perfect DA pack for our side. And, if you’re like me (cannot remember a reference to save your life) it’s a great site to pull up a reference when you need one, on your smart phone, for example.
From what I remember in the new Staff Pay plan, the book commissions were split between the seller and the pay sum. I was unaware that book commissions were no longer given out. The finance system was really only known about by staff but the plan was to show how well it worked as a way to get people to join staff. During that time they were doing an evolution to replace all non Sea Org FBOs and D/FBOs with SO personnel and the new SO FBO was to implement the new finance system.
This is typical. There are real emergencies going on and DM does not do a thing to resolve and rejects any sane solution. These situations then go on unhandled for years and years.
Another example is the non-existent galley or cooking facility at ILO. Here is a crew of about 500 that has no real cooking facility and everytime a proposal that goes up to remedy this problem, it does not get resolved. ILO even puchased a building across the street to make into a kitchen for the staff. Thanks to DM never approving any sane solution, it is now being used as a folder storage and idle org planning office.
So the ILO crew still today, after 22 years in that building keeps eating crap for breakfeast, lunch and dinner.
I can attest to the showing of his “briefings” about the new finance system and Basics over and over again. It was several times a week and they were always long. I remember in one video, to CLO Africa I believe, where someone sitting in front of him must have looked at him with something other than unwavering adulation. Next thing you know, DM is stopping his briefing telling the guy he doesn’t like the way he’s looking at him, stop looking at him and he needs to move. NOW. Can only imagine what happened to the poor guy after the briefing when DM’s goons got a hold of him.
Jim, it’s funny you mention the IAS because it really is…just the IAS.
What many people don’t realize is that Library donations are simply another donation to the IAS.
When you donate a book to a library, you’re paying $20 to $22. It costs Bridge $1 to produce each one. That includes materials, labor, etc. I was told by an ILO terminal that the $20~ profit on each book is sent directly to the IAS.
If the Church has really sent 2.5 million books to libraries, as is claimed in the Freedom mag, that’s serious profit the IAS has swept up in a program that is only supposed to be putting books into libraries… Hell, if they’re making that much profit on selling something – why would they even care if the books make it to the libraries?
The most disturbing of all are these questions:
How about all the problems of the prison planet we live on? The global totalitarian police state that is closing it’s jaws more tightly around us everyday? How about the fact that the enslavement of mankind goes practically unabated while this organization, that supposedly is the one to salvage humanity, is going off the deep end?
THOSE are the real problems that need addressing. DM, the tyrannical dictator and his mafia thugs are yet another distraction in the “free earth game”. Yes, the IAS uses scare tactics and bad news to get donations however, look around. All is not well on planet earth.
I am not wishing to be heavy as god knows we have all had enough of that but, there are many more non-Scientologists than Scientologists right now working to set this planet straight. Most Scientologists (sorry to offend) are in la la land. They have been taught to not confront entheta even if it’s true.
We still have a job to do and it’s time this guy’s reign is over so the show can be gotten on the road.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest 🙂
Okay, sorry…feeling more uptone now that I got that off my chest. 🙂
As a staff member and a long time Scientologist that has strived so long to see LRH’s cleared planet a reality, all this is of course a wee bit of a failed purpose as we have all experienced.
Thanks for letting me rant y’all. I am actually quite happy to have found you and the right BPC has been indicated.
gsm
Actually the reason for the public not being able to audit Sea Org is a lot less innocuous then what they appear to be than their shore story. Especially for higher level execs.
I mean I audited GO staffers and thought I’d heard it all!
Well…not quite.
There are some people including Miscavige that don’t want the public to know what goes on in the upper echelons of the Church or the amount of degradation the average lower level SO Staff member goes through.
From my perspective there has been an effort towards compartmentalization that didn’t even exist in the bad old days of the GO beginning in the early ’90’s and continuing through till today.
Also POT that’s an interesting hypothesis, but frankly I don’t think the IRS gave a damn if the staff got audited or not and their inspections mainly involved the Church’s financial records (from someone who was a liaison with AO and IRS, strange thing she told me also was the IRS agents were also pretty familiar with Scientology financial policies as well, if that means anything) and the new Staff Covenant for SO members which meant legalized perpetual servitude, except for Miscavige of course who was their golden boy as Chairman of CTCC.
Anyway, I was at ASHO doing the Golden Age of Crap when the “Universe Corp” made their cameo appearance. Many of them were pulled in from various service orgs in the PAC area to reunite like a rock band and even got a few old time staff on NOTs and then like a top 40 single faded out when the public demand for OT preps became critical after the release of the “New” Solo Auditors course.
So much for getting staff up the bridge!
I think a few of them managed to get on Solo NOTs and rest were abandoned mid various OT levels, having to complete them at the AO or Flag.
Funny (if you have a sick sense of humor) they did the same thing to the staff at LAO when they went SH size in the mid ’90’s.
Before that they never even bothered to send the UC to AO when they went SH size. Instead they just gutted the place of all Non-SO who contributed and let the org collapse.
I think the only place that actually got a fully functioning UC was OC during the late ’80’s which was pulled out in the early ’90’s for reasons I’ve already covered.
Mike (et al) — y’all are incredible beings.
Man, y’all know how bad I feel now? I was a very early “enabler” of the IAS. I had the foresight to see how my contributions could and should help as well as a slight nagging that this was an unusual solution. But for the greater good, I could help with money and thought I should.
Now the flip side to that: Man do y’all know how lucky I feel to have been so stupid, so naive, do dupeable and end up here with one of the most honorable groups I have had the pleasure to be affiliated with?
Ah, yes. Those dichotomies of 8-80 are alive, very well, and in full function.
The road to truth….
Thank you for a few more signs.
Whoa ~~
I take a short flight, get off an plane and there is a magnificent new post from Mike Rinder’s unique perspective and 84 responses already !!! Whew !
Mike said
“There have been LRH orders extant since the late 70’s to resolve staff pay”
I can state that the $46 a week for SO members has been the same for the last 20+ years. No adjustment for rising costs.
Very often it is $23 (1/2 pay) if stats are down.
60 to 80 hour weeks for $46 (full pay) or $23 a week half pay. This is how $1 billion can sit in SO Reserves. It’s from the blood, swat and tears of the SO members.
SO schedule can require sleep deprivation and other punishments. The keyword of the current Church is ABUSE.
The PTS/SP series clearly makes the point that an SP runs a “Can’t have”. Have for the self (SP) and can’t have for others.
Here are some of the Can’t have’s DM runs on loyal hardworking SO members.
^^^^^ Can’t have a payroll for hard work…live below poverty level.
^^^^^ Can’t have a child. Abort or (more recently) “get rid of them if pregnancy occurs”
^^^^^ Can’t have your legally married spouse…divorce is ordered ~~ click here ~~240 ordered divorces at INT BASE by DM
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=25295
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=25152
^^^^^ Can’t have decent food ~~ note the horror stories of rice and beans and powdered milk and oats
^^^^^ Can’t have Bridge. There has never been any info of a Sea Org member having gone Clear or OT through SO enhancement ~~ I know of guys who have been serving for 15 to 20 years and all they got was Purif and Sec checks.
^^^^^ Can’t have communication with own family, own comm lines, if they have ANY disagreements with the Church “External influence”
^^^^^ Can’t have cell phones, can’t read the web, can’t have laptops. Even past Execs of longevity like Lyman Spurlock, Heber Jentzsch, Mark Ingber have no personal cell phones ! Not allowed !!!
^^^^^ Can’t have a day off on major Public Holidays ~~ Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, Christmas, Easter etc.
^^^^^ Can’t have medical treatment (no money in FP)
and so it goes on…..
WHILE
Dah Fuhrer lives like a head of state ~~
Here’s the post ~~
Whoa ~~
I take a short flight, get off an plane and there is a magnificent
new post from Mike Rinder’s unique perspective and 84 responses
already !!! Whew !
Mike said
“There have been LRH orders extant since the late 70’s to resolve
staff pay”
I can state that the $46 a week for SO members has been the
same for the last 20+ years. No adjustment for rising costs.
Very often it is $23 (1/2 pay) if stats are down.
60 to 80 hour weeks for $46 (full pay) or $23 a week half
pay. This is how $1 billion can sit in SO Reserves. It’s from the
blood, swat and tears of the SO members.
SO schedule can require sleep deprivation and other
punishments. The keyword of the current Church is ABUSE.
The PTS/SP series clearly makes the point that an SP runs a
“Can’t have”. Have for the self (SP) and can’t have for others.
Here are some of the Can’t have’s DM runs on loyal
hardworking SO members.
^^^^^ Can’t have a payroll for hard work…live below
poverty level.
^^^^^ Can’t have a child. Abort or (more recently) “get
rid of them if pregnancy occurs”
^^^^^ Can’t have your legally married spouse…divorce is
ordered ~~ click here ~~240 ordered divorces at INT BASE by DM
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=25295
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=25152
^^^^^ Can’t have decent food ~~ note the horror stories of
rice and beans and powdered milk and oats
^^^^^ Can’t have Bridge. There has never been any info of
a Sea Org member having gone Clear or OT through SO
enhancement ~~ I know of guys who have been serving for 15 to 20
years and all they got was Purif and Sec checks.
^^^^^ Can’t have communication with own family, own comm
lines, if they have ANY disagreements with the Church “External
influence”
^^^^^ Can’t have cell phones, can’t read the web, can’t
have laptops. Even past Execs of longevity like Lyman Spurlock,
Heber Jentzsch, Mark Ingber have no personal cell phones ! Not
allowed !!!
^^^^^ Can’t have a day off on major Public Holidays ~~
Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, Christmas, Easter etc.
^^^^^ Can’t have medical treatment (no money in FP)
and so it goes on…..
WHILE
Dah Fuhrer lives like a head of state ~~ Marc Headley did a quick
summary
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=13660
Elizabeth. That is very well put. A major consideration of my own in deciding to do something about it.
That’s a good one, KSW!
Just heard the term “unit system” and it restimulated me on how I hated that system. I think the financial system needs to be simple and fair. I recall what RJ said about the public auditing for AOLA and that Org seemed to be doing real well. Every time I have seen auditors being paid half way decently the tech delivery was going up and up and up.
I feel you need people at the top with good havingess and fairness and have the right purpose in mind, which is to get auditing delivered in a safe theta environment. Any moron could see that if you rape and pillage your feild, it will dry up. Well…the Scientology feild has been boned long enough and now I think you have a full fledged lynch mob on your hands!
Ha, ha…where is my pitchfork? Picture the old Frankenstein movies with the torches and stuff. LOL
Alex
Kingair,
Good point. The last time I saw happy, smiling, faces like that on a bunch of staff members was in the early 80’s at our theta, thriving mission. Of course, all that ended with the mission conference in ’82 that began the dessimation of the mission network.
And yes, anyone could say anything to those staff members, who actually had good comm cycles!
You’re right again — those were real Scn organizaitons in those days. They were places where public wanted to gather, and they got real products. That’s why DM destroyed them.
Great article Mike; some of the finest people I have met were from staff experiences. Through the many articles and comments on Marty’s page, there are so many references that LRH wrote that describe miscaviage to a T and his suppessive and insane characteristics. But as it is unabated evil, it may be hard for some to confront or recognize. But if the average staff member or public knew the level of lavishness that this joker lives at, that would get their blood boiling. Beating staff is easy to not-is or laugh off, as it is so unreal- how could that be? But photos of his extravagant behaviour and lavishness for all to see may be more understandable or confrontable for some. I would pitch in for PI fees to make that a possibility. Be a nice reverse flow on the bastard.
Right. The purchasing power of the SO allowance when I joined in 1977 of $17.20/week would have to be something over $100 today to be equivalent. Gas was 50 cents a gallon then. A movie was about $3.00. SO members: Start revolting. Keep revolting to EP.
I think LRH’s vision all along was for auditing to be a profession, like accounting or medicine.
Professoinal auditors would be so valuable in society, they’d be in high demand and therefore be well paid.
And they could finish work and go home to their nice houses with white picket fences, take vacations, go to baseball games and eat crackerjack.
In other words, have a good, rich, productive life and live it in comfort, too. Nothing wrong with that, Sarge.
Glenn, I agree the staff pay sit did not start with miscaviage, but making staff so unpleasant that dealing with poor pay was no longer acceptable did, in my opinion. I was Class V staff for over 10 years, and we got a diluted version of what occurred uplines, but the unmock occurred nonetheless. I remember vividly the day the Comm Ev for many long-term SO OL’s arrived in the org in 1982 and just thinking that the Church had been taken over ( by the Convening Authority)- little did I know how accurate I was. A lot of good people have been wasted, yourself included.
I’d be up for it except for one minor disqualification: I’ve been more or less completely disaffected with organizations since I was a kid reading Mad magazine.
Seriously, though, I do think that the social networking tools devised in the last two decades virtually scream for a new model for Scientology as a subject. Notice I don’t say “church,” because Scientology isn’t considered a church in most countries in the world. I firmly believe that the way to the greatest amount of dissemination in the shortest amount of time is with an organization that is digitally based and more or less decentralized. Whereas DM is a total nut on the subject of quality to the exclusion of all else, especially viability, I would prefer to see one million hours of auditing delivered for $1 an hour than one hour of auditing delivered for $1,000,000.
Thanks just the same for your kind consideration.
Thank you for your honest insights Mr Rinder. I am learning much.
Mike,
thanks so much for shining the light on a group that has been in the background for way too long. I remember the crappy units going back to 1965. But the.low pay was more like a pebble in the shoe as our havingness was bolstered by good products, uptone staff and we used to party with the public all the time. Take away those things and what’s left: the present time scene. Ugh!
Question: Can you describe the corporate relationship between the ias and cst and what is in between the two? I am really curious.
In the mid to late 90’s an IAS reg event was held at Sacramento org. My then husband and I attended. The SO reg carefully explained to the audience and drew illustrations on the board how the credit card companies and the psyches were all in cahoots and how by using credit cards one is basically funding both sides of the fence. And then of course, to pay for donations to the IAS, one is always asked for credit card and how much remaining credit on that account. My conclusion at the time was why donate to the IAS when one is funding the psyches AND the fight against them as a Scn.
Interestingly enough, I have never seen/heard another IAS reg use the same line enlightenment and illustration of how psyches and credit cards are related.
Staff pay? Oh, you mean the crumbs we used to get on Staff Humiliation Fridays? Let me give you an image:
I was a Flag-trained auditor and course supervisor. When I fired back to my Org I found our HAS stalled on a Basic Study Manual re-train and the director of one of our departments half-ways through Staff Status II after five years! This is just to give you an idea what I walked into.
My job was to make auditors (without some basic books translated into our language, mind you). But my job was also to implement the Golden Age of Tech programs. In fact, one of the reasons the staff wasn’t going up the Bridge was because we were mired down on implementing programs that were completely out of reality with our state of affairs; and they kept sending more! Since I was busy supervising and auditing, I ended up working 80 to 100 hours a week so that I could cover all my other responsibilities. So, when I say Staff Humiliation Fridays, I mean I got to have a minute with our Treas Sec to receive my $20 for my troubles. After a few years my havingness was so low that it has taken me years to recover.
That kind of pay shows how worthless we were. Of course we “pulled it in”, we didn’t “make it go right”. And on top of that there were the ever elusive SPs that the mighty IAS was protecting us from for a price. And speaking of the IAS and events, while at Flag, DM decided to stay behind after one of the events. This was mid 90’s. During that time he not only discovered that nobody really knew what an F/N was, he also figured that none of us auditing in the HGC had our TRs and metering in. Thank heavens for this highly trained savior! Yet, in spite of his busy schedule, he found time to graced us with his presence at Flag Graduation a couple of times; and these became mini-events every week with guest speakers and all (don’t know if it’s still going on).
In my experience, staff pay is a means to invalidate and shut your havingness. A lot of the programs are designed to make you wrong and keep you away from study time or going up the Bridge. Not being trained, you’re likely to fail. When you fail, you have a loss. Having a loss, you’ll accept pretty much any false datum thrown at you. These false datums prevent you from looking. When you don’t look, you can’t become more aware. So, WTF?!
Mike
So glad you brought up;
“THE CANCER OF THE IAS”
While on the FPRD I had one of the biggest Cogs ever which had to do with this conflict between “Scn the tech” and “Scn the Church” where I had to inspect the reality of this VIRUS running through the church. The conclusion was a determination to have no more auditing until the Org is no longer a PTS environment and for me to be the anti-virus or anti-body and which I believe this group also is.
As to staff pay; 1980 – 1984 I averaged $30.00
as Flag trained Pro Sup and Classed Auditor, Eating Coco Puffs or Sugar Snaps for breakfast, Cheese Whiz sandwiches for lunch and a drive by of parents house for a midnight raid of leftovers.
What an adventure.
Ken and Mary Pirak have a son that was born into the Sea Org named Tyler. Tyler has always been very bright with lots of energy and a mind of his own. As a young teenager he ruffled some feathers and his parents asked me to be his legal guardian which I was honored to do and all went well.
Last week an OT 8 told me about how Tyler came knocking on the sliding glass door of her Sandcastle room on a rainy night at about 10:30 PM. He was BEGGING her to give him $20,000 for the IAS as “he needed it to save his head”.
Now I read your post and it makes me wonder how far south Ken has gone and if he would pimp his own mother for the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR!
Elizabeth,
Each of us has a responsibility to ourselves and each other to get our dynamics in shape, and progress as beings, on BOTH sides of the grade chart. A full and complete mastery of the subject of auditing, the mind, life and beings is vitally necessary to “making it”…both in Life and the “upper levels” on all flows. Yes, the situation on this planet could go very south very fast, in which case I would hope that you and everyone else were in good enough shape to escape intact, if not unscathed. But on the up side, imagine the influence a group of free beings could have on this “heartbreak hotel” of a planet by just converting entheta to theta . My friends deserve the chance at least to make it….
So please get in your enhancement on a daily basis. (And that means more than just reading Mart’s blog 🙂 ) From a longer term view, there is no such thing as “failure”. Just lack of intention and follow through.
That is my understanding of the why of “We Come Back.”
After I finished my FPRD Basic form (paid for out of my own pocket while a full time staff member, so I would be “qualled” as an Exec) I had a native state experience. Total Freedom. Total ARC.
It was AMAZING!
It was also a “no games condition”. I got lonely.
So lets play.
Be the change you want to see.
One night in 1998 I was working on a script with Diana Hubbard. I was studying population statistics and I read that if you had the population of earth march by four abreast, you would never get to the end of the line because the population is growing faster.
Put another way, the CoS has claimed for decades they had “8 million” members (we all knew that was BS even in the 1990s) and for sure it’s even stronger BS today. But here’s the point: let’s talk Scientology “expansion” and let’s evaluate that datum against a datum of comparable magnitude — the only datum that actually matters — Earth’s population.
Relative to the size of the global population, Scientology has not just been shrinking since Miscavige took over, it’s on a rocket going backwards!
Think of Scientology membership as a beach head on planet earth. Just to stay the same relative size, Scientology would have to be growing at the same rate as the global population.
Our precious beach head has been shrinking faster than a rayon shirt in a dryer on fire.
Elizabeth;
You are totally spot on. All this time with DM on post is lost time and we need to get him the hell out of there asap.
We can do it if we all agree that we can. For cripes sake we have OT 8’s and 7’s on board and non-labled OTs of magnitude. We have more free’d theta than DM and OSA and the rest, so let’s just give it a good shot, so to speak.
My gross wages for financial year end $aus:
2005 $1,457.00
2006 $2,011.00
2007 $3,567.00
My very first pay packet in March 1999 was $2.20….I laughed and did not care. I knew the $ were never there, it did not matter. I was there to find the answers to life….and I found them in the tech of Scientology.
We always thought our Org was one of the worst. We got evicted from 2 buildings within 2 years (best de-kluge ever). Best staff pay I ever got was one Xmas $300.00……That was my best Xmas ever…All the staff were over the moon and with the recent departure of some very out-tech execs, the new execs put on a FEAST of beer and cheese and more beer…Wow, it really was my best Xmas..mean execs gone, beer, extremely up tone staff members and a $300 pay. 🙂
Sam,
Exactly this used to happen in Australia as well and I have to say was never successful either. No-one stopped moonlighting.
The next mission was to attack the Scientologists responsible for employing staff members and ripping them off post.
@RJ upthread: as of the end of ’89 when I left OC, there was a UC coming any day now, but they had not yet arrived, so far as I can recall. I was only minimally on staff past mid-year and gone completely by November, though.
Ah, the missing toilet paper. I remember being on course learning Scn Admin tech and going to the bathroom and wondering if they even had toilet paper that night.
“I have two kids who were born in the SO. They have worked there, in senior positions, for there entire lives. Now they are both in their 30s. Neither one has ever moved up either side of the Grade Chart past Grade 0.
There is no sign that they, or any other staff member, ever will. However, they work 120 hour weeks!”
Well, their not making any money in the SO, they aren’t getting any case gain or training, what are they working for?
If you work and work and work and getting nothing out of it, aren’t you a slave? Isn’t that slavery?
I can’t tell you how much this upsets me.
Hi,
I had been munich org staff for little more then 10 years. I had been on staff while attaining SH Size. I even managed to be on staff around 4 years without moonlighting as we made high pay. Oddly enough soon after reaching SH size pay policy changed and I had to moonlight. That was basically my way out. As I recognized that there is no intention at all to ever pay staff a salary he could live on.
And by the way, if you are staff a long time usually you cannot afford the bridge anyway as you lost 10 years on wog production and earning time. You need as first step another 10 years or so to go back to a normal life. Getting enough money to repair your teeth and having some extra money to moove to a better home aso.
And we never did get any mention of the Universe Corps either after reaching. Many of us dedicating many years on staff are sitting here in the dark, with a mishandled case and no chance at all to get this sorted out.
RJ compartmentalization ! you pinpointed it. Like a good old dictator DM used that. Alsoo when SO or Staff do not get auditing it means more time to work in slavery like POT pointed out. And of course Image for PR purposes, all Miscavige cares about is Image and PR and the urge for money of course or plain old greed.
1. Divide and conquer (compartimentalzation)
2. Suppression of his flock (slavery)
3. Grandstanding (Image building based on lies)
4. Greed (raking in the Cash)
“Have you ever met a real SP, a real monster”
“This is the classic tactic of the unethical: manufacture a problem in order to sell your solution.”
Huck that reminds me of the movie “Wag the Dog”
“DM is stopping his briefing telling the guy he doesn’t like the way he’s looking at him, stop looking at him and he needs to move.”
Welcome to the Animal Kingdom where the vain sovreign Baboon shows his big red arse of which he is very proud.
Serious: In Gorrilla prides or other animal groups you have to avert your eyes and do not look directly to the leader because that questions his authorithy. I wonder if the “Body” known to us as David Miscavige never recieved his “Thetan”as he portraits all the characteristics of a Primate.
Frederick Douglass:
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Elizabeth,
Sometimes I feel the same way as you do, but all this communication has to take place, so charge can blow and the many sherman tanks that mike pointed out are confronted. More people confronting the truth sooner the sherman tanks are confronted and the problems resolved.
But, there is also the OT Orgs policies that tells to not concentrate on stops but poor the the coals onto the purpose, as when you put attention onto stops as D(evil)M(an) does, you get stops.
What’s the purpose ?
Yeah could talk and discusss it for years. But in fact thsi all has allready been set by LRH. So just lets do it.
So lets found the “New Church of Scientology”, I think our group is now enough big, and just lets do the standard action as we did 30 years ago, but
with the motto “Ligthtness of Organisation” and “wisely aplying policies”. I’m already putting money aside for to do the rest of my bridge there. The demand for standard training and processing at reasonnable ratesis gargantuan, also if they would pay fair salary, they’ll have no problems for future staffs. If the “New Church of Scientology” would open its doors tomorrow they ‘ll be overwhelmed with a flow of money and would have enough reserves to fight back in courts the C.O.S that propably would like to stop it. So what ?
I don’t think that any Court will help the C.O.S to not follow it’s own creed (right of his own religion) and support them in stopping the “New Church of Scientology”. It is a basic right that we have and only god can take it away. At least in Europe before the human right court we would win for sure. So what’s the problem ? Nobobody can stop us to found the “New Church of Scientology”, its a human right, nobody can stop us to do the Ot-Levels the way we want ! It’s our right, as LRH said , the “work was free, keep it so”.
It’s basicly just the theta-mest theory in action. We are out of the mest at this given time, but we learned a lot.
So lets start it over again, but this time we have lots of experience and will do it right.
Dear Marty, Mike, Jim, Helmut, Gear and all friends of LRH, when will be the founding day of the “New Church of Scientology” ?
Don’t worry and have no fear as this is the Solution to the riddle.
One thing D(evil)M(an) forgot as LRH said:
WE COME BACK !
Have a nice day !
Great article, Mike and very apropos of what is going on. The low “have” that staff can experience because of these conditions can open the door to inappropriate handlings (poor ole Steve Ferris looking for “beer on the wall” donations to pay the rent) and pull staff off delivering the services that will pull them out of the soup.
As a former part time staff working full time as a nurse to support our family, I understand completely the situation that most staff find themselves in. Its rough…though you feel its worth the sacrifice to further the group.
I remember the fights with OSA US when they would call me at 11pm for some goofy reason (“we need white horses at the capital in the morning!””you can make it go right!”) when I had to be up at 5am to go to work. They, of course, were on post for 18 hours per day and had their own problems…Its been a mess for a LONG time!
And my thoughts on using non-scios for jobs that don’t require SCN training…non-scios would not do the jobs for the pay being offered!~ Its cheaper to use the slave labor! Of course if you were earnest in your desire to actually clear the planet, then this would make sense and would free up staff to audit and train.
Again, thank you to Marty and Mike and for all of you who contribute to this site.
Vicki
BRAVO on the last 2 articles, re: S.O.S. and staff!
Sadly, the guarantee of $15 a week + room and board was a “windfall” to the pay I commonly received working day and fdn in a class 4 org (and a GOOD org, at that).
Grüss Dich Georg !
Munich Org was a great Org ! Lots of Swiss there too in the seventies.
Alles Liebe
Swiss
The light is shining brightly on DM he is being exposed. How wll he respond? Its ashame the staff work SO hard with the idea of clearing the planet and helping others while DM just crushes the spirit of every SO soul. Its so sad but yet so true. When will justice be served? He is single handedly annihilating Scn, he is a fake and a coward!
The Psych/credit card pitch might have been a failed ploy to get you to write a check rather than use a credit card. Depending on the card used, a merchant has to pay a 1%-3% commission on every purchase.
But of course, such a pitch would fail, because few people have enough cash in their checking accounts, compared to their credit lines.
Lise,
$2.20 a week is normal. Sometime, most of the time we have no pay. As far as I can remember, the best Xmas bonus we got was $100.
And I was refused to enter to the staff Xmas party once because I was just a staff member’s 2d and he, the LRH COM was so worried that I will eat all the food. Scooter will remember the KR my 2d wrote to the LRH COM.
All the comments here are very interesting and mind opening. I thought, I was the only one observing the situations reported here and I used to open my mouth and was lots of times in troubles and staffs thinking of me being out ethics.
Why didn’t we never communicate like adults do about the problems, while we were on staff and resolve the problems ?
I just read the debrief of David Mayo written in 1983, it’s like a prophecy about the times to come. Already in those times he knew what was happening. Here the Link:
http://freezone.org/reports/e_mayo01.htm
Some excerpts:
“During early 1982, David Miscavige and Shelley Miscavige ran an “Offload Project” during which a large number of SO members, including several members of the CMO were “found unfit” and thrown out of the SO. This project was directly under Pat Broeker. The majority of those persons that Pat Broeker and David Miscavige didn’t like were gotten rid of, including Anne Taskett, Donna Robinson, Melanie Murray, Dede Voegeding, Gale Irwin, Lois Reisdorf (all CMO), plus other crew.”
“Also during this time period of early to mid 1982, I became more and more outspoken on other than purely technical matters – I made my objections to high and rising prices of Scn services, to the rashes of incorrect and unjust ethics and justice actions and numerous other matters very well kown to WDC and other senior execs in an effort to get these points corrected.”
During a conversation with Pat Broeker and David Miscavige in about mid 1982, some relevant attitudes were revealed. Pat and Miscavige were discussing the fact that they would have the responsibility for the management of Scn from LRH’s death on until he returned in next life. (Pat & Annie Broeker and David Miscavige were to be the three trustees.) Their attitude was that they would have to exert more control and use more force to “keep Scientologists in hand”, “under control”; e.g., Pat said of Kerry Gleeson, “If he will dare to query my orders now, what will it be like when the old man isn’t around? He won’t take any notice of me!”
I tried to point out that confidence in management depended on competence and ARC, not control or force and brought up the “Essay on Management” – which was taken by Pat and Miscavige as “riding the enemy line”.
“During this period, the idea of prosecuting Scientologists (by RTC) – both staff members and public Scientologists- and the “policy” of “Excommunication” and debarrment from OT levels and from any auditing and training forever were also introduced. Much more could be said on such subjects and the events which occurred during the period from 29 Aug 82 when I was removed, to 14 February 1983 when I left, but these matters confirmed my conclusion that a) what was occurring in top management of Scientology was not Scientology, and b) that it was not possible for me to bring about a constructive change or reformation “from within” the organization and c) that I should no longer support or condone what was occurring by my continued presence at CMO INT or in the Sea Org, as to stay on under those circumstances would have been a betrayal of Scn and everything we stood for.”
“One of the main difficulties that I had encountered on the post of Senior C/S International was when technical purity or technical integrity encountered disagreement from certain management execs whose main interest and concern was statistics – not that such disagreements were continuous but when there was trouble, one of the fundamental points was the question of technical integrity versus immediate stats. Although hard to believe, an example of this is that Pat Broeker came to me with a suggestion that I should put out a false “OT VIII”. It was to consist of simply having the solo auditor fly his own ruds once a week! I refused to have anything to do with it. Pat had lots of well-sounding reasons as to why he had suggested it, but at the bottom of all these was that his idea was to solve a financial problem.”
“I also started to become progressively more and more outspoken on the subject of what I considered to be enormous financial waste. (For example, at Gilman Hot Springs some locals were hired to weed the gardens and as I saw these mainly sitting around in the gardens doing very little, I inquired and was told that this was not to be questioned as they had heen hired by Shelly (Michelle) Miscavige, but I was also told that they were paid $38,000. Another example is the monstrosity that was built around the swimming pool at Gilman Hot Springs – a ship mock-up complete with masts and rigging at a cost of approx. half a million dollars.) While these extravagances were occurring, the crew were being told that finances were tight and that everybody needed to tighten their belts to keep expenses down, crew pay was cut and food and medical allocations were cut!”
Already in 1982 Miscavige showed whom he is. We all came to the same conclusion 28 years later.
Time for action !
Have a good Day !
From my understanding (though I’ve never seen it in my 25 years in Scientology), the staff used to get regular auditing. Regular enhancement goes a long way in balancing out that exchange and, of course, making the person more able. It improves conditions.
The staff that get auditing at our org now are those who pay for it so along with the staff’s paid audting, IAS donations and library donations it’s enough to keep them moonlighting for good. In fact, moonlighting staff are great prospects.
It gets so off purpose that we begin eating each other alive within the org. I remember not being willing to put a fellow staff member on the phone with a Cont IAS reg and being considered a stop on expansion. Normally sane beings (and I do believe caring people) are willing to completely throw their moral compasses out the window.
Ha! Me too, lets tail him and get some nice scuba diving shots of him or something, while back at int people eat beans and rice in the hole.
While we are discussing Sea Org pay, here is another aspect that added insult to injury.
While at Flag it was not uncommon to get no pay, 1/4 pay or half pay there was another obstacle to over come. When you went to pick up your pay there was frequently someone standing there demanding $10 or $15 for a birthday or Xmas gift for DM, Shelly or a list of other executives. As you paid your name was checked off against a crew list. The crew were chased up and hounded against these lists to get them to pay up.
Great article Mike. It’s obviously created a lot of Tone Arm action based on the comment board.
To correct some earlier comments about the Universe Corps: actually the Univ Corps teams were manned up in the late 80’s early 90’s by SO members that bore children, and they were cast aside. Orange County had a functioning Universe Corps til 1998, when RTC under no doubt DM’s influence effectively wiped them out. Now LRH ED 339R has become extinct, staff have obviously gone into apathy about getting their OT Levels.
It’s appalling how many ways were found to suppress what is supposed to and could be the way out of the misery of human existence and how many viewpoints need to be assumed to fully grasp the magnitude of suppression on the subject of Scientology from within the church by its Führer and his henchmen.
We were always being hit up to pitch in for gifts for execs. Sometimes it took days for “everyone to ante up”.
I also remember being on the RPF at Happy Valley. A dog there got bitten by a rattlesnake, and the RPF bosun told us if we didn’t get it to the vet immediately, it would die. Within seconds, we had over 300.00 raised by the even lesser paid RPF to save this poor dog.
Victoria,
Speaking of Scuba diving and lavish lifestyles- during MV anniversaries at the Freewinds the IAS pays for luxury yacht rentals, and dive instructors for DM and entourage. Also for expensive dinners at the top joints in the islands. Sometimes there would be a prolonged stay after the events for weeks or a few days.
A couple of people are brought along just to handle the photography gear, develop film etc. The captain and several divers from the ship assist with the dive gear.
After one of these prolonged stays where underwater photography was the main subject of the paid Dive instructor, a slide show was compiled synched to music and all. This became the subject of a “source night briefing” a couple of months later at the Int/Gold base. The entire crew was made to watch these slides as an example of how DM was getting products while working and doing events.
I’m not really sure what the crew thought – no one said anything but the air seemed pretty thick afterward – it was obvious he was messing around and took credit for it as good work, implying that the rest of the base were scumbags and didn’t get good products (while the rest of the crew were working extended hours for events and Mike & Marty were putting out legal fires in Clearwater which he caused in the form of Lisa McPherson suit.)
Very timely and spot-on post. It’s truly amazing when you take a step back and just obnose how really screwed up things have become.
You’re very right, Mike, about the compassion being gone – compassion for both staff and public. That’s probably the single biggest thing that has driven me away. With out that basic purpose, it’s no surprise, really, that things are the way they are.
The purpose to help one’s fellows has been replaced by a focus on MEST, the use of threats and fear mongering to control others, squirrel, off-beat practices, and a games condition between staff and public. What a mess!
Glenn, I didnt have a problem making 15 dollars a week in CW in the 70’s. I think it was 17 and change. There was no time to spend it anyway. I doubt if money is often the why on any SO member ever leaving. But Org staff are diffferent and had different income demands for their personal well-being and living arrangements. And speaking of Clearwater, I have to disagree slightly with Mike’s response. I thought the food there was incredible considering the budget allocated for staff meals was probably a dollar a day per person. And that goes back to the lack of caring for staff as well. The galley staff back then should have been awarded their L’s. 5-10 staff putting out 3000 meals a day, 7 days a week. Plus a christmas banquet that was truly impressive by any standard from a group with probably little or no training. But that sort of dedication and hard work was everywhere at Flag and in Orgs. How we have come to have lost the publics trust and imploded rather than expand is truly cause to shake ones head in dismay. HUGE change needs to occur for us to ever get it going in the right direction. A different business and delivery model along with at least minimum wages for staff and a kindler and gentler overating basis alltogether.
As a public I paid about 4-500 hours of auditing which got me through Dianetics Case completion and Grade 0. Was able to get to OT IV in the SO while LRH was around up to ’86.
Made no progress on the grade chart in the 15 years thereafter, during DM’s reign. Just all FPRD forms and tons of custom and tailored forms.
Many of my friends & Ex did not get anywhere despite their decades worth of service, so I was lucky.
Thanks for the intel Deidre.
It just proves one thing…..
We were lied to!
In the PAC area we were told how OC had gone SH size and how they fired a UC team to deliver the OT Levels to all the lucky staff there.
Believe or not they even had pictures in “Scientology News” of the auditors being sent!
Of course non of us bothered to check it out ourselves!
Sheeesh.
gruezi wohl swiss
and to all swiss scientologists.
I did the comm course in 76 in munich under
jens b. as co. Went exterior after
4 days TR0.
That is more you can gain now in CofS.
See you on the mother ship in around 30 years.
This 8 million “members” figure is actually a basic alteration of what Ron said in ‘Fundamentals of Thought’ which was just an estimate of the number of people who applied Scientology principles to their lives.
Back then the definition of who was a Scientologist was much broader than it is now which has been limited by the IRS “Secret Closing Agreement” to be specifically a member of a legally bona fide Church of Scientology.
Ron’s definition was much more inclusive and could have included the CIA who where applying Scientology techniques back in the early ’70’s and those other members of the IC who began using them in the late ’70’s and early ’90’s.
Sure is a lot of info here about the abuses inflicted on staff over the years – much of it’s stuff I’d known about for a while but always excused it as “we just all need to get trained and up the Bridge.”
I remember going to a niece’s wedding some 400k.s from Sydney and almost rolling our car on a treacherous road – luckily it ended up with only a busted radiator. The nearest town had a mechanic who would fix it but he had to get a radiator trucked down from Sydney and that wouldn’t arrive until the day I was supposed to be back on post. So I stayed, got the car fixed and got back to post a day late. Of course I called the org and explained the sit too.
The result? A KR from the LRH Comm (the same one Pirates Wife mentioned – hi my friend 🙂 – if you wanna chat I’m often on ESMB these days) about how I was sabotaging the implementation of the GAT by having unauthorized leave – per him I should have left the car there so I could get back on post on time. And that was insanity that his senior and so on up the line were pushing.
Small wonder that the orgs are a pale shadow of what they were in the 70s and early 80s – when I first joined, if I wasn’t there the response was “are you all right? anything we can do to help?”
In 1984 at Saint Hill for a couple of months there was a non-professional co-audit for OT IIIs allowed. It was going fine, then got stopped by Int because it was “out-tech,” not because anyone was getting messed up by it.
In 1990-ish at ITO there was another non-professional co-audit for OT IIIs allowed. I got a couple of sessions there, thankfully just enough to finish OT IV so I could get onto KTL. Then it got stopped by Int because it was “out-tech,” but again no-one had been messed up by it.
The RPF do it, so why couldn’t we? We certainly had enough good tech guys around to take care of things. I figured it was simply violating some upper management idea that “no auditing is better than any auditing.”
Paul
Hi Mike,
I generally dont agree much with what you say here or Marty says. I consider some articles too biased and exaggerated. And I certainly disagree with your handling being done for all this.
BUT! I do want to comment that in this article you are absolutely right. And it is also KNOWN within the orgs that this is so. Pity Pity. But true.
Ah yes the vast “Psychiatric Conspiracy” theory which is much like James Jesus Angleton’s vast monolithic Communist Conspiracy theory which basically wrecked CIA’s capability to see what was actually going on in the Soviet Union and why its eventual collapse came as a complete surprise.
The fact is there is some truth to this, as covered in various GO directives which is why it sticks to a degree.
It is true that Institutional Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry want to either coopt or eliminate their competition which included Scientology at one time when it was an actual threat.
However, thanks to Miscavige’s wonderful leadership and with the help of his “friends”, that threat has pretty much been neutralized.
So in effect OSA to a large degree dramitizes being hallucinatory effect. In other words what is called paranoia by the psychiatric profession.
What we call Type III.
In other words they see “enemies” where none exist or haven’t existed for some time and fail to see actual enemies who have infiltrated the organization itself, just like poor old Angleton failed to see that Kim Philby was an actual mole until the evidence was overwhelming!
Actually, it’s worse, because Miscavige has removed any counterintelligence capabilities the Organization once had by eliminating the GO!
So any way, as I wrote, they substitute these crack pot conspiracy theories like the one above and another one that is just as idiotic, like the reason the Drug Companies are promoting psychiatric drugs is to intentionally create “Illegal PCs” when in fact the reason is much more pragmatic and obvious.
They are doing it to make money!
In fact they don’t even consider the Church a viable enemy any longer, since that problem has pretty much been taken care of, thanks to David Miscavige and his “friends”.
Great article Mike!
I think there’s another big glaring Sherman Tank sitting right alongside and goes hand-in-hand with this staff neglect issue.
I’m referring to the “Flag Trained” issue. The demand for Org’s to send recruits and veteran staff to Flag so the Org can have “Flag Trained” such and such’s…is a huge drain on the Orgs…and mostly unnecessary…IMO. Especially in light of how long they’re kept at Flag for training they could easily get locally.
I remember in the 70’s people would go off to Flag and then return in a month or two. Auditors were trained locally, Sup’s were trained locally…and we had a booming Org???
Does it really take 2 years to train a supe how to take a standard roll call?
Another symptom of horrible management led by the most destructive manager I’ve ever observed.
Symbiote
I’m with you on the complete digitalization & decentralization of as much as possible, Dan. But I do think there’s a way of blending both decentralization/digitalization and brick+mortar, that allows for local centers that may do more than just Qual (think of the “chiropractice center” or even “hospital” model — they don’t require centralization, other than perhaps the AMA or some other licensing authority).
Either way, I’m with you on re-evaluating how best to re-form Scientology organizations — which is why I think you’d make a great member of a leadership team who is chartered with doing just that.
What ever happened to John Woodruff? Wasn’t he the ED that led the OC Org during the 80s?
Paul,
“I figured it was simply violating some upper management idea that “no auditing is better than any auditing.” ”
Hysterical. LMAO! 🙂
Anyone else want to put money on whether it was a Wednesday night or not?
What is the ILO (what does it stand for)? Is it the same as the CLO (that we used in the 80s)?
In my mind, there are three things that Miscavige has done over the last 20 years, that more Scientologists need to know:
1. Personal, and continual, physical violence of his staff.
2. Personal C/Sing (or at least overseeing) of the Lisa McPherson case, prior to and leading up to her death.
3. Personally influencing/handling Tom Cruise after 2004 (and in particular, personally editing that arrogant/obnoxious Tom Cruise video which was leaked onto Youtube and sent the CoS into a PR tailspin, and led to Anonymous, South Park, et al.)
If any other CEO (or Chairman of a Board) of any other organization / company in the world were personally responsible for that level of incompetence and behavior, they would be FIRED on the spot.
More Scientologists need to know the above about Miscavige.
There was a functioning Universe Corp in OC/LAD that was making OT’s out of staff that were getting auditing regularly. Then on May 1997 in “one fell swoop” the OC/LAD Universe Corps (UC) were wiped off the face of the map. RTC Tech Inspectors and Security confiscated all the OT materials (why if it was just a handling). Little did those CL V org staff know that this would end their UC along with any hopes of going OT while on staff. HCOPL 20 Jul 70 CASES AND MORALE OF STAFF, “Any and all trouble occurring in orgs during a long period of heavy enemy attack on them was traced not to the enemy BUT TO THE LOSS OF TECH MATERIALS, REDUCTION OF THE USE OF TECH (as in quickie grades) AND IGNORING STAFF CASES.” The entire OC/LAD UC got eliminated over an auditing flub and without any gradients of correction, not even a Comm Ev. HCOPL 29 Apr 65 ETHICS REVIEW, “A staff member may not be suspended or demoted or transferred illegally out of his division or dismissed without a Committee of Evidence.”
An auditing flub should not result in removal: HCOB 16 Aug 72 FLUBLESS C/SING, “3. The C/S follows a very standard handling of auditors: A. 1 error of any Kind—instruct by reference to HCOB. B. A second error of any kind—send to Cramming and get the Auditor crammed at once, without any loss of auditing time but before the Auditor is allowed to audit further. (This is 2 hours, not 2 days!) C. A third error of any kind—RETREAD, wherein the Auditor’s weak areas are located and the Auditor has to M7, M6, M4 and restudy the materials of that area. This takes the Auditor back to Step A.
David Miscaviage wasn’t physically at this event however his juniors in RTC/CMO – carried out this injustice and violations of LRH policy that resulted in a huge contraction of LAD/OC and is thereby directly accountable. There had to be direct orders and/or approval from DM, as an order of this magnitude would not have been allowed.
HCOPL 7 Apr 69 ORG REDUCTION OR ERADICATION, “There are several ways an org can be collapsed or closed. While these get a lesser condition, they are important. … “18. Use ethics suppressively.”
I know that CC Int did have the Universe Corps at one time. In fact, as of 2007, there was still a secured/locked room labeled Universe Corps. I have no idea if it’s still active — I had heard from a staff member there that it was no longer being used for the UC.
Hello Scooter,
Amazing how KR’s are used. At one stage we had 2 staff members who were getting married, they had a fully approved CSW which was only approved one day before their wedding yet had been submitted at least a month earlier.
The wedding went beautifully and they went off on their honeymoon. When they arrived back they were welcomed by being slammed into ethics and KR’d for “Hat Dumping”…and this was on an APPROVED CSW…go figure!!!
Well you see Paul, that’s the whole point.
It seems the actual purpose of management these days is to prevent auditing and training.
And they’re doing a damn fine job 😉
Matt,
That is sick.
Enforced givingness when you already made so little! Very twisted.
Alex
That is bizarre Pirate’s wife. That a group purporting to be spreading the best tech on the planet with such low havingness that a 2-d of a staff cannot join in is so wrong…blah!
Alex
Sorry to hear that Georg, I really am.
But take heart that you had good intentions and you will pull in some good things now that you are away from the madness.
Thanks for what you did!
I for one appreciate it!
Alex
Isn’t the point of insanity the point where he tries to stop things?? Just thinkin….
The person or person’s responsible for allowing David Miscavige to get in power and run the church of scientology off the rails is the person or person’s who should be cleaning up this mess.
I know, nobody right?
RJ, actually, I said it based on my knowledge. OC did indeed have a Universe Corps, but not when I was staff. I have since gotten confirmation from someone who received service from the UC.
@Margaret Yes, Woodruff was. He went on to LA Day.
Later, he left LA Day and I don’t personally know the circumstances.
In 2007, Woodruff was indicted for a mortgage forclosure avoidance scam.
Wow, thanks for the details on the end of the UC at OC/LAD. That’s incredibly sad.
Deirdre, I’m not disputing what you posted at all.
In fact many sightings of UC activity where like Blue Book reports of UFOs.
As I wrote earlier they even had pictures of the UC team that had been fired to OC when they went SH size in the late 80’s.
However, it doesn’t surprise me that they weren’t actually sent and that it was all just a “PR caper” that us suckers back in the PAC area fell for.
Miscavige and his team have turned lying to the public and staff into an art form by contriving events that never actually happened.
The details are even sadder. I knew two of the personnel on the UC for years; the C/S (Jill Graham) and auditor ( Mike Reppen,son of Claire Reppen). These were both very good people and long-term dedicated staff.The major point of their removal was for missing withholds on a particular exec; they were assigned to the RPF and Jill passed away while on the RPF and Mike left the SO from the RPF. And from what I garnered, they were under these conditions due to miscaviage orders.
Marty, As if you are not doing enough already, is there a way to allow us to contribute financially as we are able to such a project.? I am not in the know on PI’s, etc. Or someone else who visits the blog who could orchestrate such an endeavor?
@ RJ
“Actually, it’s worse, because Miscavige has removed any counterintelligence capabilities the Organization once had by eliminating the GO!”
This spy stuff is what worries me and a lot of others about the Church.
Gets ever sadder than that, Jill was taken away from her 2 young children for 4 years and died of breast cancer while on the RPF. LRH mentions cancer stems from losses on the 2D. Imagine being away from your young children for years, no longer having a hand in raising them, hard to fathom the cruel hand inacting that injustice,. After all that her non SO spouse is still a kool aid drinker.
Mike also RPF’d with a young child that he would no longer have a hand raising by being condemned to the RPF. I can attest he survived the suppression and his family is flourishing and prospering.
Margaret ILO is Int Liaison Office. It’s formerly the FLO, formerly the FCB. Same org with different names. Upper middle management in LA. CLO is lower middle management.
Then I suggest you study the ‘Art of War’:
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html
Especially the section on ‘The Use of Spies’:
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html#13
The spy stuff going on with anonymous actually should worry you more:
Any way spying is as Allen Dulles said in his book ‘The Craft of Intelligence’ is the “second oldest profession”.
Historically most religions whether they admit it or not have some branch for intelligence or espionage. In fact the Vatican was and probably still is a center of intrigue.
Also I’ve found in my research religions and sects that don’t have some form of intelligence and espionage capability, especially counter intelligence and espionage are easy targets of infiltration and manipulation by adverse agencies and groups, like for example the “Church of Scientology”.
Grüßt Euch, Swiss und Georg.
Those were the days my friends ….
I experienced pretty much the same at Frankfurt mission in the mid-1970s when it was under Blanka Annakin’s leadership. One day, Ike&Tine Turner gave a concert in the area, and as their drummer was a Scientologist he arranged for a bunch of us to get to the concert (no charge), as well as to the after-event party in the Intercontinental Hotel. Great times!!!
Wish you all the best – it IS doable. Just don’t ever give up.
That’s a really nasty bit of Black Scientology you are applying there, “Tim H.”
Trying to give us all a Wrong Item of not taking responsibility, are you?
What are you going to try next, now that I have called you on this one?
Michael A. Hobson
@RJ I love Boris ! He is a good friend. OSA poisened his dog. Yes I have been reading up on “The Art of War”
Lol yes Anonymous promissed in their first Video that they would mirror the tactics of the C of S
“Yet for all that we are not as monstrous as you are; still our methods are a parallel to your own. Doubtless you will use the Anon’s actions as an example of the persecution you have so long warned your followers would come; this is acceptable. In fact, it is encouraged. We are your SPs.”
Okay I will restate: It is the illegal stuff that is done with or to obtain the Intelligence that worries me like poisening a mans dog or drowning one. Again I am looking at you Moxon and I want to state: I said that.
Great post Mike.
Throughout history potentates have understood that thier power and wealth came from the collective efforts of the people that they ruled. Benevolent rulers nurtured them while tyrants enslaved and abused them. It is not difficult to see which valence DM is dramatizing. He is a pathetic wisp of a thetan who could not suvive, much less prosper without being a parasite of the power generated by the SO. In my book these beings are the most able OTs on the planet based on overcomming all obstacles toward target attainment. They persist despite the hardships and abuse because they are committed to a noble purpose and cannot conceive that they are in fact flowing power to an SP who has no intention of allowing them to succeed. They deserve better and I am proud to be part of the group that will not let up on DM until ethics and justice has been restored to the Church of Scientology.
I’m advocating RESPONSIBILTY, but it’s not a very popular subject.
Somebody or some people are responsible for this mess, I just thought the responsible party or parties should be taken steps to clean up the mess.
Other than David Miscavige, who else is reponsible for this situation, the tooth fairy?
David Miscavige had help in getting power in others not taking steps to stop him and had help in having his orders carried out in the last 20 years when he did get to power.
Let’s not kid ourselves.
Yeah Boris is a likable character. So are most “former” spies I know.
However, in dealing with what Angleton once called the “wilderness of mirrors”, you should be very careful because things are not always what they seem.
In other words be careful that you are not being “played”. For someone like Boris anonymous can make an excellent recruiting for other “projects”.
Yeah, I’m with you on Moxon and Kobrin.
Spooky shysters to be sure.
In fact rumor is that they’ve done work for the company.
@RJ. If you do a little research you will find out that Boris got royally shafted by the company. Some stupidfag diplomat outed him at a dinner being a drunk ass-clown. It send Boris running for his dear life.
If you are intrested he has his own youtube account. Boris has had it with the USA and its incompetent “intelligence” goons.
This part is me venting:
CIA is tottaly incapable in getting it right. Hello CIA you couldn’t prevent 9-11 you morons. Because of that they resort to torture and Illegal activity like drug and arms trade.
Yes yes rumors. Moxon is like a tragic character in a play. He has to go down with his master. Lost a child to the cult. Once he must have been human but he has gone total psychopath. I hope Moxon vs Berry/Berry vs Moxon will deliver the goods.
CIA even recruited a dutch acto named Rijk de Gooier who openly admits that. The Spy world is deadly but it can be very amateuristic alsoo,
Personally I never ascribed to the “lone Miscavige theory” and yes he did have facilitators and those who assisted his rise to power.
However, there is a difference between responsibility and blame.
Also what do you suggest these “others” who you claim are “responsible” supposed to do that they aren’t already doing?
Personally, I think they are doing a fine job of correcting the scene and allowing others to contribute as well.
If they is anyone “responsible” it is all of us including you. In one way or another.
Tim H
This Reverse Process you are attempting to run on us (the collective readership of Marty’s blog) of making *us* wrong for supposedly not taking responsibility for DM’s takeover and destruction of the Church of Scientology is not going to fly here.
If you *really* want to know how it came about and who helped DM bring it about, go read “The Secret History of Miscavige” by Gang-of-Five on Scientology-Cult.Com
We people here *are* taking responsibility for cleaning up the mess, so FOAD.
I watched Boris’ series of vids and found them fascinating. He pretty much confirmed what I already knew about CIA’s involvement with Scientology.
His Case Officer being a Scientologist didn’t really surprise me at all.
We had some pretty spooky characters on our lines at the AO wanting to do the OT Levels and I don’t think it was solely for their own personal benefit.
Anyway, keep in mind that Boris is a “former” spy and why the former is in quotes.
He is welcome in my home any day. Scientology does have policies of infiltration itself, to get people into positions of influence like goverment clercks.
Operation Snow White and Freak Out are no fairy tailes. drowning judges dogs arent either.
I the conversations we had about poland, holland, the cold war,moronic american politics and my home town. Alsoo about his lovely dog. He is a valued adviser.
He likes Anonymous because it isn’t affiliated with big companies, goverments or religions. Have you seen him at some of the first protest. To come out and show yourself that is making a commitment.
I like the fact he is mysterious to you all.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
As far as a way to contribute financially, I’ve heard of instances (one well known example being the film Julie & Julia) of a Paypal account being set up so the blog followers could donate money.
“Also what do you suggest these “others” who you claim are “responsible” supposed to do that they aren’t already doing?”
What other high level executives from the church of scientology’s past or present that are doing anything other than Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder?
Please name few.
What’s Pat Broeker doing these days to help the situation?
What’s David Mayo doing these days to help the situation?
Why doesn’t Guillaume Lesevre, Heber Jentzsch and Ray Mithoff leave Gold Base like Marty did and speak out?
What’s Debbie Cook waiting for?
Where are all the top level executives that were around David Miscavige in the 80’s , 90’s and 2000’s? What’s their level of responsibilty for this situation?
The list goes on.
You say, “what are they suppsed to do that they are not already doing”, other than Marty and Mike, what have those guys done up to this point?
I’m not refering to any “us”.
Where are all the top level executives that were around David Miscavige in the 80’s , 90’s and 2000’s?
Just to name a few, what about Pat Broeker, David Mayo, Guillaume Lesevre, Heber Jentzsch and Ray Mithoff?
David Miscavige is 80% of the problem but who are the other 20%? David Miscavige had help getting to power, staying in power and having his intentions carried out the last 20 years.
You’re right, in a world filled with irresponsible people, trying to get people to take responsibility usually doesn’t fly very far.
That’s part of the problem I was hoping to remedy.
@Tim H: You can see more about how Pat Broeker helped create the situation elsewhere on this blog; there was a recent entry about him.
Personally I do not know what these guys have done. However, as I suggested. It shouldn’t matter.
What matters is what are you willing to do?
Thoughtful Steve has the website Scientology-cult and I’m sure he’d be more than happy to post a KR for you on any out points you’ve noted, any violations of policy or tech that you are aware of, etc.
Why demand that some higher authority do what you should be able to do?
IMHO, this is how we got into this mess to begin with.
It seems there are too many people who still want to follow instead of lead.
Why make others guilty for your own failure to act?
I agree Brad. I also feel that a reformation in the historical sense (SCN. split in two) will set us back quite a way.
We’ve already been divided way too long.
We need to take the WHOLE of Scientology back, all of it. And ALL the Scientologists could be working toward that goal so we can get on with this.
I admire those SO members and all staff immensely. I myself went through massive abuse because my post was so important to me.I know that feeling, when you have a job you really intend to get done. Just because someone makes it hard for you doesn’t mean you quit. So, so many inside are hanging on… Man have we been through a Q&A or what?.
The fact that Davy boy says you can’t be a scientologist outside the church means nothing and we all know it. We don’t have to go to any court and ask corporate permission either.
I gave my mother a touch assist today.
The definition of a Scientologist is someone who applies the tech. So it just seems very important BE what we are in present time.
Somebody is probably going to try to drag “DO” and “HAVE” off to court for some more time, and could be distracted yet another span of years, ironing out some freaking IRS deal or some BS that has NOTHING to do with what most of us signed up to do.
I can’t wait to read all these comments, man this blog is on fire.
Looks like we all have plenty to say about all this:)
Tim said, “I just thought the responsible party or parties should be taken steps to clean up the mess.”
Sure, that would be great, but not imminently necessary either… let’s all clean it up.
We could spend half a billion of the contract doling out measures of responsibility and blame. Waste of time.
Deal with it as it flushes out. Spot the SP has never done anything but deliver wrong items and crash stats.
“Oh look so and so is cleaning up a mess he didn’t even make.”!
We’re all on this mad planet together haha. Let’s keep an eye on our microcosm, in case no one noticed every religion in the world is fighting, amongst themselves and with the others.
Not sure why everyone has that drama keyed in but I have my theories. The point is we won’t win playing that way, they’re doing it wrong.
Lets just keep the flow going. It’s easy really if we stay out of effort.
Yes, we are all responsible for the current situation to some degree but the question is this:
Shouldn’t the people who are the *most* responsible for causing the current situation be the ones who should do the *most* to straighten it out?
In my Org, there was a little coterie of execs actually sabotaging training. The Academy on both Day and Foundation emptied out, as did the Div 6 courseroom in both orgs. This little posse engaged in the most cringeworthy self-congratulation at every muster and staff meeting. The ED (who was the Reg) never sold anything but auditing, because two of the little posse were highly classed auditors. This was despite the fact that the two staff in question were actually posted on senior exec posts and the HGC itself had nobody posted in it – a complete camouflaged hole. I wrote a KR.
So the sup would work all day with nobody else on staff going to help out in the Academy, or do anything to support that particular department’s activities. The sup would go on study at night and then do call-in until midnight. There wasn’t really anything more than one individual could have been expected to do. The Qual Sec was quicksilvered off post, HCO was kept constantly distracted, the D/ED (who was the only person who ever did tech call-in) blew, and meanwhile the little posse did nothing but congratulate each other about the WDAH’s. The Tech Aide meanwhile did nothing but KR the sup and enturbulate the area. The public students hated him.
So the posse recruit their own poster boy to replace the sup, and suddenly the Academy has all the help in the world from the Org execs and the Tech Aide.
Guess what policy was quoted to justify the removal of the terminal whose face didn’t fit?
Good point Tim.
But we don’t know exactly who is *most* responsible for the current situation.
Also we don’t know exactly why the situation happened.
Besides that, the people you’ve mentioned currently do not have any power within the Organization itself to change the situation, even if they themselves decided to do something about it.
Victoria said: “Sure, that would be great, but not imminently necessary either… let’s all clean it up.”
Don’t you see, if we go behind the people who are most responsible for this mess and clean it up, what does that do for making the truly responsible parties in this situation more responsible?
It just like when the US government keeps bailing out these large US companies everytime they fail. What incentive do they have to be responsible and succeed the next go round?
Whatever you reward you get more of.
I don’t intent to spend any more years of my life and my energy trying to fix a mess caused by the top executives of the church of scientology in the last 35 years. I’ve been at it since 2003. I think it’s time to figure out who’s responsible for this situation and put pressure on them to do something like Marty and Mike are doing.
Why can’t Pat Broeker, David Mayo, Guillaume Lesevre, Heber Jentzsch and Ray Mithoff do what Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder did? Leave the church ( if they are still in ) and speak out about what’s happening and operative as independants.
If Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder, Marc Headley and others can do it, why can’t they?
Pat Broeker was in the same Valence as DM. David Mayo had back in the day much more flak to handle and I think he must be of age if he still is alive, Leserve is a broken man, I sugest you watch the yearly Events where he is alowed to speak of a paper,and Marty informed us about Heber being in the RPF and he is now 78 year old. DM abuses even the elderly.
Victoria You have been set allready back for many years. It is a new beginning to do away with what is soiled and broken and in my eyes criminal.
American proverb:
“It doesn’t work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.”
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I guess I will weigh in, I am pissed reading all this… I was born into this ridiculousness, and at the first sign of trouble in my schooling scientology convinced my parents to take me and my siblings out of school in the eigth grade. I was on staff for 11 years, 40 hours plus a week, from the age of 9 forward. When I was underage, it was called “volunteering” but I had a mandatory 40 hour a week schedule and had to go to ethics if I did not get stats, etc… WHEN I WAS 10 fucking years old.
From the age of 9 to the age of 20, when I “blew” my org and my family, I got paid an average of under $1000 a year (tax returns proove it). I was allowed only 2 vacations, despite begging for time off for family events and so forth. I even tried to leave when I was 15, but I was told I would not be allowed to have contact with my family in that event and would have to make arrangements to live without my mom and dad.
I remember being 12 years old, and being screamed at by a full grown adult for not getting my letter writing quota and trying to leave the org at midnight – the execs even ordered the person who was screaming at me to physically restrain me from leaving without doing the letters – this was called TR -8c, and was an excuse for unlawful imprisonment in their minds.
Even today, I wish I could tell my whole story, and use my name, but my Family would disown me. Unreal. I wish I could confront the church and the people who perpetrated those abuses upon me in a court of law, but again, any such attempts at seeking justice result in no relationship with my Family.
And I probably should not care about people who would leave me to an abusive church like this, but it is true that the vast majority of people in or working for the church are awesome people who really believe they are saving people from an eternity of torment. I think that is what my parents had in mind, and it is why I do not hate them, I hate the people that abused their trust and worked me like a slave for no money and against my will.
Marty and Mike went on a hike to find the truth of my laughter.
It was Marty I audited when John Colletto was NOTTed,
And Diane Colletto was murdered by her husband who suicided.
It’s not funny to some, and crazy to one, who was a failed Warrior who never had to run from the truth!