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What are Scientology staff really there for?

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
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Scientology is a con, but I think it has been an effective con for so long because it isn't only a con. It's a weird hybrid of con and sincere spiritual movement; my take, unfortunately, is that the con is senior in the partnership. Somehow, it seems to me, the strange way that org staff are employed must be an effective mechanism in keeping the hybrid running: keeping the religion serving the con, and hiding the con behind the religion.
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Yes, I believe this to be true. However, to the average sincere scientologist/Staff Member, the spiritual practice is ALWAYS seen as senior to anything else. The con is sometimes glimpsed but never acknowleged or fully inspected by those sincere people.
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Scientology orgs have lots to staff compared to other businesses/churches simply because Hubbard wrote "Recruit In Excess."

The philosophy is just to flood the place with personnel and that will get the stats up as they get trained and do their jobs.

And the carrot dangled is - you are having trouble because you have a SMALL organization. As it gets bigger, your problems will lessen, your pay will increase and Scientology will expand.

Then you the staff member will be able to live well and get auditing etc etc ad nauseum. But you have to have a BIG organization for that to happen.

No business could ever afford to run staff recruitment like Hubbard says - you'd be broke in a month.
 

Royal Prince Xenu

Trust the Psi Corps.
Good points, SoT. I do think that auditor training does qualify a person as educated within their subject. It doesn't pass muster as University training, of course, nor should it, because the person never shows the capability of critical thinking. Then again, I'm not sure that most bible colleges train their ministers in critical thinking, either. I really don't know.
...

I'm not satisfied that University education trains people in critical thinking either.

As for ministries, "creationism" (that the Earth was created in six literal days) is again doing the rounds as flavor of the season.
 

uniquemand

Unbeliever
Well, undergraduate, probably not unless they are a science major or logic major. By graduate level, critical thinking is heavily emphasized.
 

Royal Prince Xenu

Trust the Psi Corps.
Well, undergraduate, probably not unless they are a science major or logic major. By graduate level, critical thinking is heavily emphasized.

I was talking about my observations of post-graduate "staff"--lecturers and tutors, etc..

I got into serious trouble because I wrote a sentence that exceeded a page in length (and yes, it parsed syntactically). My response was: "You've obviously never read a piece of legislation, any Douglas Adams, or any of the guff you expect us to read!"

Scientology is a straight-jacket, so it Acadaemia.
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
I can see you have put some thought into this piece. Because this deserves at least some insight from those of us who might have a glimmer, I'll share some of my personal inspection.

The CofS uses a public personna created back at a time when it was agreed upon that it is a religion. In keeping with that theme, they must pour volumes of records AT the IRS routinely to prove this premise.

This serves many purposes, one of which is that the Management level can claim that the staff are volunteers, working toward a spiritual goal and justify the excuse of payment to these poor souls as a stipend, base pay shared equally by all or based on performance only. (If I explain how that shakes out to those who actually walk up to the window to collect a few dollars - it would take more time and energy than the topic deserves). For example: working a regular 60 hour week, with a classification as a trained auditor and a clear there are weeks when I recieved as little as $9.00 in pay. Probably around the period of 1989.

In have no expierence in the Sea Org so I can not comment.

When joining the Organization I had several years of business management under my belt and had won awards in my field for budget control, payroll managment and sales records. The longer I worked within the structure of the Church, the more I realized how often the very policy of Administration that is set-up for each Church to follow, is routinely and with abandon violated or not used. Rather, direct orders into the Org would be sent down from higher levels to the current Flag Banking Officer to set certain allocations aside for payments to the higher Orgs. Usually these were Publications Org, Author Services, and various 'New" programs as they would come up.

The task of the local planning group, usually the Adminsitrative Council along with the Treasury Secretary would then have to figure out from the balance that remained, how to pay the basic expenses. I mean really basic stuff; lights, water, mortgage, taxes. Oh so many times we operated without lights or the water would be cut off and so on. Most of the time the staff pay would be a very last consideration when those emergencies had to be handled first hand.

So - NO - I don't think anyone was in it for the pay. Our first carrot that was dangled was the promise of our OT levels if we got our stats to Saint Hill size and the Birthday Game became the goal. Its hard to believe the lengths that people would go to in order to accomplish this most unreachable target.

This new target of the Ideal Orgs reveals more about DM than I'm sure he realizes. A bright shiny Org is for PR purposes only. Again the staff must have something other than what a regular business has to keep them producing.

In business, you have to pay people what they are worth or you lose them. In this group the crazy Ethics policies can be manipulated to convince them they are not worth getting paid because of a dip in there production. Yet the admin policy calls for investigation into the area to see if promo went out or if people missed work or if someone untrained came into the area- many, many things that could be used as tools to fix it. Unfortunately, the jump to ethics was most usually made and those hard working staff were led to believe that it was their own fault and introverted them to believe that is the reason they would not be getting adequate payment.

So they stayed and they worked hard and they scraped together rent & food and would go forward with the purpose to do better and figure out what they
did wrong.

So Student of Trinity - I hope I helped to shed some light and of course defer to all my fellows who did their duty and had their own reasons for staying even if they didn't know the story I told today.

As others have noted over the years, orgs are not run like a business, they are run like an abusive household, with management as the abusive spouse.
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
Out ethics hit the nail on the head. Taking 10% of the top of a business is alot of money considering that the remaining 90% must be used to pay expenses.Most business owner would kill for a 10% after expenses. When on staff at riverside Bent would take most of the gross income and put it into a bank over seas and pay the staff ridiculously low wages for the amount of work performed. The SO was even more f--k up. Their pay amounted to slave wages but they got to wear cool uniforms. The whole system was set up to create wealth at the top and victims at the bottom.

I get the impression from TR'SIN's post #10 that it may have been more than 10% from regular orgs, which is why Int Management always wanted to turn missions into orgs (more profit for mgmt), and why they hated field auditors. Even with field auditors, mgmt figured out how to squeeze them into unprofitability: demand that they get their C/Sing done by the org C/S (for $$$), and any nitpick by the C/S needing to be handled in org cramming (for $$$) or by retrain ( for $$$$$).
 

AngeloV

Gold Meritorious Patron
I get the impression from TR'SIN's post #10 that it may have been more than 10% from regular orgs, which is why Int Management always wanted to turn missions into orgs (more profit for mgmt), and why they hated field auditors. Even with field auditors, mgmt figured out how to squeeze them into unprofitability: demand that they get their C/Sing done by the org C/S (for $$$), and any nitpick by the C/S needing to be handled in org cramming (for $$$) or by retrain ( for $$$$$).

This is what happened to family members of mine. They were co-auditing and getting C/S'ed by the org. But the execs got tired of not making money on the auditing and insisted that they pay org auditors for 'proper' auditing. Which promptly chased said family members away causing them to become disillusioned. I'm sure glad scio shoots itself in the foot a lot.
 

Arthur Dent

Silver Meritorious Patron
I get the impression from TR'SIN's post #10 that it may have been more than 10% from regular orgs, which is why Int Management always wanted to turn missions into orgs (more profit for mgmt), and why they hated field auditors. Even with field auditors, mgmt figured out how to squeeze them into unprofitability: demand that they get their C/Sing done by the org C/S (for $$$), and any nitpick by the C/S needing to be handled in org cramming (for $$$) or by retrain ( for $$$$$).

A few years back they implemented a policy or Flag Order that they previously saw no need to enforce. It prohibited any field auditor (and possibly mission) from operating within 20 miles of Flag. It killed off a lot of good will and good people who were field auditors.

I believe they may have done the same in LA but not sure. LA was always the land of the field auditor. Not sure about now.

As far as I know only the Bellaire Mission, less than four miles from Flag, was allowed to remain. Likely due to the influence, at the time, of Kathy Fe$chback, who is no longer there. (Money can fight with money!)

They also put the field auditors through the mill. Those that are still standing were compromised considerably and their freedom of speech inhibited down to the bone. Many had folders pulled and inspected and were run into the ground with accusations. Made to do extensive lower conditions, had Kangaroo court comm evs, certs pulled, etc. Some saw the light and joined org staff as a way out of the storm. What one does to survive as an auditor is put up with management and try to let it impinge as little as possible and they grovel exactly as much as is necessary to release the stranglehold on their certificates so they can keep on operating. Surely at some point all will have to ask why and leave.

All this so Flag could get the income being "stolen" by the field auditors. Now Flag reps push for people to buy their lower bridge at Flag. The squeeze is all about the money.
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
A few years back they implemented a policy or Flag Order that they previously saw no need to enforce. It prohibited any field auditor (and possibly mission) from operating within 20 miles of Flag. It killed off a lot of good will and good people who were field auditors.

I believe they may have done the same in LA but not sure. LA was always the land of the field auditor. Not sure about now.

As far as I know only the Bellaire Mission, less than four miles from Flag, was allowed to remain. Likely due to the influence, at the time, of Kathy Fe$chback, who is no longer there. (Money can fight with money!)

They also put the field auditors through the mill. Those that are still standing were compromised considerably and their freedom of speech inhibited down to the bone. Many had folders pulled and inspected and were run into the ground with accusations. Made to do extensive lower conditions, had Kangaroo court comm evs, certs pulled, etc. Some saw the light and joined org staff as a way out of the storm. What one does to survive as an auditor is put up with management and try to let it impinge as little as possible and they grovel exactly as much as is necessary to release the stranglehold on their certificates so they can keep on operating. Surely at some point all will have to ask why and leave.

All this so Flag could get the income being "stolen" by the field auditors. Now Flag reps push for people to buy their lower bridge at Flag. The squeeze is all about the money.

The field auditor whose experiences I was referring to, who had a VERY successful practice, was finally told he had to re-train. Through Class VI. That was the final straw, and he left auditing entirely and works in a non-Scientology job now.
 

secretiveoldfag

Silver Meritorious Patron
So what are the prospects for this inefficient religious-coated scam as its membership declines, fewer join and experienced people see the light? Will it implode, or find some other way of making money?

As for what keeps staff hanging in there, when any wog would be signing on and scanning the employment ads, IWNAS but from reading about it and looking around it seems initiates get hooked on auditing. They hang on through thick and thin, in the hope of getting more auditing. Auditing may scramble important parts of the human brain but it is addictive. It is not unknown for members who are disconnected and broke to have killed themselves so that they can come back in the next life and get more auditing.

I believe this has something to do with why staff submit to being degraded. But IWNAS so I don't know anything about this at first hand.
 

secretiveoldfag

Silver Meritorious Patron
Not unknown? I'd say that's about as unknown as it gets. Where did you get that idea?

Producing links is not my strong point, but the death I remember best was an old guy, I think he had been an architect, whose daughter spoke at an early rally in LA. He was SP or PTS or something, sat around at home deeply depressed, and then killed himself. So the balance of his mind was disturbed, but it was disturbed by his beliefs.

There was another suicide Sydney Australia, of a young man who believed he was going on to better things. Is this not acceptable behaviour for a true believer?

Edited to say I GOT THE LINK. Jeanne-Marie Boucher, "WrongPlaceWrongTime". It was her father who killed himself so that he could get a new body and more auditing.

But the video has been taken down, Terms of Use Violation. How can she violate the terms of use of her own video? Does anyone have a transcript?
 
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uniquemand

Unbeliever
I think that behavior is usually only encouraged, hinted at for the very old or the very sick. While I don't like the idea, very much, I've been forced to consider it for myself, at one point. I like having the option, but not because I think I'm an immortal spiritual being who has a Passport to OT to come back on! People should have the option to end their suffering, though I believe most of the time, having a "this too shall pass" attitude is wise.

Certainly, while I was on staff, there were people who talked under their breath about how it would be wiser for some people to "drop the body" than to continue to fix something beyond repair. This attitude can be spotted in Science of Survival, but it is not unique to scientology.
 
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