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The Church of Scientology network operates as a multinational conglomerate of companies with personnel, executives, organizational charts, chains of command, policies and orders. [1] [2] [3]: 88, 131
Religious Technology Center is the most powerful executive organization within the Scientology empire, and its current chairman, David Miscavige, is widely recognized as the effective head of the church.
— Hugh Urban [3]: 131
Personnel are bound by policy as written by L. Ron Hubbard and by orders from any senior. Each staff member is junior to those above them on the organizational chart (called an "org board" [4]: 369 ) and is senior to those under them.
Scientology "members" (also called "public" [a]) are those individuals who are not on staff, who pay the organization for training or auditing services, and who live and work separately from the Church of Scientology. [5]: 70 Members defer to all staff personnel, who are seen as their seniors. All members and staff defer to Sea Org staff. Even though at-large members are not part of the organization proper, they are ranked within the entire chain of command and are frequently pressed into service for clerical or promotional tasks or recruiting new members. [2]: 180 Members who recruit people for Scientology services are called "field staff members" (FSM) and are paid a commission of 10%–15% of the amount the new person pays. [6] [7] [2]: 181
The recruit is transformed from a client to a follower and from a follower to a deployable agent.
— Roy Wallis in The Road to Total Freedom [2]: 188
Staff sign employment contracts, though in recent years these contracts label them as volunteers or "religious workers" to circumvent labor laws because staff are almost universally paid less than locally mandated minimum wage. However, all organizational policies written by L. Ron Hubbard refer to such workers as "staff". [8]
These contracts have lengthy durations. At a Class V organization, a contract may be as short as 2.5 years; extending to 5 years or more if they are sent to Flag Service Org for extensive training. Sea Org members sign billion-year contracts; effectively a perpetual contract with no expiration date. Sea Org personnel live in communal housing; Class V staff make their own living arrangements and sometimes even have second jobs. [2]: 182
Staff hold posts where they are either given a small fixed allowance (Sea Org) [9] or are paid based on a share-percentage of the organization's weekly gross receipts. [8] [2]: 135–136 [10]: 71 Occasionally, those who work in sales or fundraising posts may have a chance for bonuses. Sea Org members who work for one of the for-profit corporations in the network are paid a minimum wage, reduced by deductions for housing and other expenses, bringing their pay back in line with other Sea Org allowances.
The employees of Hubbard's Org are not merely officials, but also disciples. Hence commitment of staff to the Org is secured by ideological means, replacing the need for the attractions of tenure, secure salary and orderly promotion through a work hierarchy.
— Roy Wallis in The Road to Total Freedom [2]: 137
Staff are required to keep " stats" (short for "statistics")—a count of their production. They perform weekly evaluations of their own stats and are required to chart the stats on a graph, declare their " ethics condition" for last week's production, and write up their "ethics formula", laying out their plans for the next week. Personnel whose production stats were lower than the prior week, or whose graph shows a general downtrending pattern, are dealt with by the " ethics officer", often with harsh penalties. [5] For example, certain conditions below "Normal" may preclude getting paid at all. [2]: 183
Staff may be punished, though usually for lack of production or insubordination; not usually for basic behavioral matters. In the Sea Org, staff are routinely removed from post and reassigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), a forced labor and re-indoctrination program. [1] [9] Removing a staff members completely from the organization is called "offloading".
Sea Org members are heavily discouraged from engaging in any family activities such as the raising of children, and are expected to spend their entire waking hours in service to the Church of Scientology. [1] [9]
Further paralleling the institutional order of developed societies, ... Hubbard has strategically used that authority to establish Scientology upon the legal-rational basis of an almost ideal-typical bureaucracy. This social world is run along formal lines defined by "Policy"—the stream of bulletins and material written or authorized by Hubbard, periodically compiled into thick volumes and treated for all intents and purposes as law. Policy specifies every aspect of organizational life.
— Roger Straus in Scientology "Ethics": Deviance, Identity and Social Control in a Cult-Like Social World [5]: 70
Though formal training courses are available for all posts, staff members are expected to be proficient at all times, whether trained or not. All posts have a "hat writeup" ("hat" for short) which consists of Hubbard writings pertaining to that post and other writeups written by those who held the post before. [4]: 244–245
Staff are recruited with promises that they are expected to train or be audited for 2.5 hours per day worked (called "enhancement"), [2]: 182 but in reality enhancement time is usually bumped for the latest emergency—called a "flap" [11]: 284 [4]: 131 —or expected to be performed outside of their normal work hours.
Staff receive Scientology training, and occasionally auditing, on a deferred basis. Invoices are written up for services taken, but no payment is expected while the staff member continues to work for the organization. If they complete their contract, they are pressured to re-commit for another contract term, [12] but if they leave having fulfilled their contract term their deferred invoices are forgiven or waived. While seeming to be free services, if a staff member is offloaded (fired) or breaks their contract by leaving before its term completion, they are immediately invoiced for all services rendered during their employment. [2]: 182 Since Sea Org members sign perpetual contracts, their invoice—called a "freeloader bill"—can be quite high; no waivers or reductions being given for years of service rendered. [9] [13]
If a person leaves before their contract termination date without performing specific steps for leaving (called "routing out" [12]), they are considered "blown" and such individuals will often be declared suppressive.
This section contains a select list of some of the current and former officials of Scientology organizations.
Hubbard was well aware of the value of corporate structures as weapons in the control of both his movement and its environment. A complex corporate structure maximizes the difficulty of surveillance, or investigation of the movement's affairs.
More than one observer has noted that Scientology's early organizational structure resembles less a traditional church than it does multi-national enterprises such as the Ford Motor Corporation, Coca Cola or International Telephone and Telegraph.
While being subjected to long interrogations and psychological punishment during the 'routing out' process, [they] were held in isolation and surveilled 24 hours a day by security ... [P]hysical force is not required to prove duress and that confinement and threat of force is sufficient. That's not a subjective fear, [...] they're basically being trapped on the ship until they sign the documents.
They gathered evidence to show that despite the confusing profusion of names and acronyms, Scientology was really a single enterprise, and its actions and litigation were directed by one man, Hubbard's successor David Miscavige. Former high-ranking officials declared that they had witnessed Miscavige—who supposedly had no position or standing at the time with CSC, the corporation being sued—directing the litigation against Wollersheim and ordering the destruction of key evidence in the case. Special intelligence operations, they declared, were formed to target not only Wollersheim and his attorneys but even the judge, witnesses, and their family and friends. When the jury awarded Wollersheim $30 million, one former official testified, Miscavige vowed that it would never be paid, even if it cost more than $30 million to avoid it. CSC, meanwhile, was purposely ransacked of all assets to make sure that Wollersheim couldn't reach it, two former officers declared.
In particular, Los Angeles's 14-lawyer Bowles & Moxon, which does more of the church's work than any other law firm and acts as Scientology's de facto in-house department ... Bowles & Moxon was formed in 1987 with two lawyers, [Kendrick] Moxon and name partner Timothy Bowles, and opened an office later that year in the church's Hollywood headquarters complex. Today [1992] seven of the firm's lawyers are Scientologists, including all four partners. Moxon, for example, has a long history with the church. In the late 1970s he served a stint as the "District of Columbia Assistant Guardian for the Legal Bureau," working in the very office where massive covert operations against the government were being run at the time, according to a stipulation of evidence that was agreed to by all parties in the 1979 federal criminal case against nine of the church leaders.( text-only version)
My name is Norman Starkey. I'm a founding Scientologist, having received my first services in South Africa in 1960. I'm also a founding staff member. I've been on staff for fifty-one years. I knew and worked closely with Mr. L. Ron Hubbard for some twenty years. I served him in many capacities. I was one of his Personal Aides and also became the Captain of his 3,300-ton ship that served as his home. On his departure from this life, I was appointed by him to be the Trustee and Executor of his estate.
At the centre of Xenophon's long, impassioned speech were the allegations of Aaron Saxton, who was 'born' into Scientology and 'rose to a position of influence in Sydney and the United States'.
Aaron Saxton, who rose to a senior level in the Sea Org and was sent to the US...
Aaron's allegations about his time in the Sea Organization, Scientology's senior management.
Part of a series on |
Scientology |
---|
![]() |
|
Controversies |
More |
The Church of Scientology network operates as a multinational conglomerate of companies with personnel, executives, organizational charts, chains of command, policies and orders. [1] [2] [3]: 88, 131
Religious Technology Center is the most powerful executive organization within the Scientology empire, and its current chairman, David Miscavige, is widely recognized as the effective head of the church.
— Hugh Urban [3]: 131
Personnel are bound by policy as written by L. Ron Hubbard and by orders from any senior. Each staff member is junior to those above them on the organizational chart (called an "org board" [4]: 369 ) and is senior to those under them.
Scientology "members" (also called "public" [a]) are those individuals who are not on staff, who pay the organization for training or auditing services, and who live and work separately from the Church of Scientology. [5]: 70 Members defer to all staff personnel, who are seen as their seniors. All members and staff defer to Sea Org staff. Even though at-large members are not part of the organization proper, they are ranked within the entire chain of command and are frequently pressed into service for clerical or promotional tasks or recruiting new members. [2]: 180 Members who recruit people for Scientology services are called "field staff members" (FSM) and are paid a commission of 10%–15% of the amount the new person pays. [6] [7] [2]: 181
The recruit is transformed from a client to a follower and from a follower to a deployable agent.
— Roy Wallis in The Road to Total Freedom [2]: 188
Staff sign employment contracts, though in recent years these contracts label them as volunteers or "religious workers" to circumvent labor laws because staff are almost universally paid less than locally mandated minimum wage. However, all organizational policies written by L. Ron Hubbard refer to such workers as "staff". [8]
These contracts have lengthy durations. At a Class V organization, a contract may be as short as 2.5 years; extending to 5 years or more if they are sent to Flag Service Org for extensive training. Sea Org members sign billion-year contracts; effectively a perpetual contract with no expiration date. Sea Org personnel live in communal housing; Class V staff make their own living arrangements and sometimes even have second jobs. [2]: 182
Staff hold posts where they are either given a small fixed allowance (Sea Org) [9] or are paid based on a share-percentage of the organization's weekly gross receipts. [8] [2]: 135–136 [10]: 71 Occasionally, those who work in sales or fundraising posts may have a chance for bonuses. Sea Org members who work for one of the for-profit corporations in the network are paid a minimum wage, reduced by deductions for housing and other expenses, bringing their pay back in line with other Sea Org allowances.
The employees of Hubbard's Org are not merely officials, but also disciples. Hence commitment of staff to the Org is secured by ideological means, replacing the need for the attractions of tenure, secure salary and orderly promotion through a work hierarchy.
— Roy Wallis in The Road to Total Freedom [2]: 137
Staff are required to keep " stats" (short for "statistics")—a count of their production. They perform weekly evaluations of their own stats and are required to chart the stats on a graph, declare their " ethics condition" for last week's production, and write up their "ethics formula", laying out their plans for the next week. Personnel whose production stats were lower than the prior week, or whose graph shows a general downtrending pattern, are dealt with by the " ethics officer", often with harsh penalties. [5] For example, certain conditions below "Normal" may preclude getting paid at all. [2]: 183
Staff may be punished, though usually for lack of production or insubordination; not usually for basic behavioral matters. In the Sea Org, staff are routinely removed from post and reassigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), a forced labor and re-indoctrination program. [1] [9] Removing a staff members completely from the organization is called "offloading".
Sea Org members are heavily discouraged from engaging in any family activities such as the raising of children, and are expected to spend their entire waking hours in service to the Church of Scientology. [1] [9]
Further paralleling the institutional order of developed societies, ... Hubbard has strategically used that authority to establish Scientology upon the legal-rational basis of an almost ideal-typical bureaucracy. This social world is run along formal lines defined by "Policy"—the stream of bulletins and material written or authorized by Hubbard, periodically compiled into thick volumes and treated for all intents and purposes as law. Policy specifies every aspect of organizational life.
— Roger Straus in Scientology "Ethics": Deviance, Identity and Social Control in a Cult-Like Social World [5]: 70
Though formal training courses are available for all posts, staff members are expected to be proficient at all times, whether trained or not. All posts have a "hat writeup" ("hat" for short) which consists of Hubbard writings pertaining to that post and other writeups written by those who held the post before. [4]: 244–245
Staff are recruited with promises that they are expected to train or be audited for 2.5 hours per day worked (called "enhancement"), [2]: 182 but in reality enhancement time is usually bumped for the latest emergency—called a "flap" [11]: 284 [4]: 131 —or expected to be performed outside of their normal work hours.
Staff receive Scientology training, and occasionally auditing, on a deferred basis. Invoices are written up for services taken, but no payment is expected while the staff member continues to work for the organization. If they complete their contract, they are pressured to re-commit for another contract term, [12] but if they leave having fulfilled their contract term their deferred invoices are forgiven or waived. While seeming to be free services, if a staff member is offloaded (fired) or breaks their contract by leaving before its term completion, they are immediately invoiced for all services rendered during their employment. [2]: 182 Since Sea Org members sign perpetual contracts, their invoice—called a "freeloader bill"—can be quite high; no waivers or reductions being given for years of service rendered. [9] [13]
If a person leaves before their contract termination date without performing specific steps for leaving (called "routing out" [12]), they are considered "blown" and such individuals will often be declared suppressive.
This section contains a select list of some of the current and former officials of Scientology organizations.
Hubbard was well aware of the value of corporate structures as weapons in the control of both his movement and its environment. A complex corporate structure maximizes the difficulty of surveillance, or investigation of the movement's affairs.
More than one observer has noted that Scientology's early organizational structure resembles less a traditional church than it does multi-national enterprises such as the Ford Motor Corporation, Coca Cola or International Telephone and Telegraph.
While being subjected to long interrogations and psychological punishment during the 'routing out' process, [they] were held in isolation and surveilled 24 hours a day by security ... [P]hysical force is not required to prove duress and that confinement and threat of force is sufficient. That's not a subjective fear, [...] they're basically being trapped on the ship until they sign the documents.
They gathered evidence to show that despite the confusing profusion of names and acronyms, Scientology was really a single enterprise, and its actions and litigation were directed by one man, Hubbard's successor David Miscavige. Former high-ranking officials declared that they had witnessed Miscavige—who supposedly had no position or standing at the time with CSC, the corporation being sued—directing the litigation against Wollersheim and ordering the destruction of key evidence in the case. Special intelligence operations, they declared, were formed to target not only Wollersheim and his attorneys but even the judge, witnesses, and their family and friends. When the jury awarded Wollersheim $30 million, one former official testified, Miscavige vowed that it would never be paid, even if it cost more than $30 million to avoid it. CSC, meanwhile, was purposely ransacked of all assets to make sure that Wollersheim couldn't reach it, two former officers declared.
In particular, Los Angeles's 14-lawyer Bowles & Moxon, which does more of the church's work than any other law firm and acts as Scientology's de facto in-house department ... Bowles & Moxon was formed in 1987 with two lawyers, [Kendrick] Moxon and name partner Timothy Bowles, and opened an office later that year in the church's Hollywood headquarters complex. Today [1992] seven of the firm's lawyers are Scientologists, including all four partners. Moxon, for example, has a long history with the church. In the late 1970s he served a stint as the "District of Columbia Assistant Guardian for the Legal Bureau," working in the very office where massive covert operations against the government were being run at the time, according to a stipulation of evidence that was agreed to by all parties in the 1979 federal criminal case against nine of the church leaders.( text-only version)
My name is Norman Starkey. I'm a founding Scientologist, having received my first services in South Africa in 1960. I'm also a founding staff member. I've been on staff for fifty-one years. I knew and worked closely with Mr. L. Ron Hubbard for some twenty years. I served him in many capacities. I was one of his Personal Aides and also became the Captain of his 3,300-ton ship that served as his home. On his departure from this life, I was appointed by him to be the Trustee and Executor of his estate.
At the centre of Xenophon's long, impassioned speech were the allegations of Aaron Saxton, who was 'born' into Scientology and 'rose to a position of influence in Sydney and the United States'.
Aaron Saxton, who rose to a senior level in the Sea Org and was sent to the US...
Aaron's allegations about his time in the Sea Organization, Scientology's senior management.