Wynski, it may be hard to figure out exactly, but it does point to orgs having more nominally paid staff, whether full or part time, than would seem obvious given how little business they seem to have.

The labor board sought $750,000 in back wages, and over $900,000 when “interest and indemnities” were included. Given a Canadian minimum wage of around $12 per hour and evidence Scientology was paying around $2 per hour, the $10 per hour gap would indeed appear to equate to about the 75,000 hours I cited.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/scientology-cnesst-labour-board-pay-employees-quebec-city-1.5123770

Quebec is “ideal” but reportedly small, so I’d assume its staffing is typical of US orgs as well.

I’m hoping this discussion will flush out someone who can actually tell us the details of what goes on inside orgs these days.

Apples and oranges. Those figures are messed up because of back wages and large time based penalties and much higher minimum wages. That wouldn’t be the case in the US where most orgs are.

Wynski, in the Quebec org pay case, the labor board was asking for about $750,000 for 62 workers, though it didn’t say how far back that went. Figuring about $10 per hour, given a Canadian minimum wage of around $12 and reports of weekly pay stubs of about $70, that’s something like 75,000 hours of labor, or what 40 people would put in working full time for a year – not taking into account part-timers, pay claims going back for multiple years, or whether overtime was included as well. Plus there may also be a couple of staff at the top of the heap, making commissions regging and off IAS donations, whose pay came to more than minimum wage, and possibly even some loyalists who refused to be taken into account by the labor board.

At a minimum it shows that there are still at least dozens of nominally paid part-time workers in an org, in spite of it being otherwise mostly empty and having few paying customers. Full-time staff could even be in the 10 to 20 range, though again it’s frustratingly hard to determine just what is really going on inside the orgs.

Inflation was 1% per month at worst in the 1970s, and averaged about 6% per year. The 10% was Hubbard’s greed, compounded by desperation to keep his cash flow up as Scientology’s prime demographic of young baby boomers dried up and orgs’ cash flow started to go bust (the term “baby bust” was actually used in the late 1970s, in reference to effects felt by business and institutions that depended on an influx of teenagers and young adults).

https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-cpi-consumer-price-index-1970-1979/

Almost worse yet, Hubbard was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in cash in vaults in European banking havens, often extracted at great personal cost from his credulous followers, whose value was being significantly eroded by the decade’s inflation, because he didn’t believe in investments. Each US dollar stashed in Switzerland 1970, was effectively only worth 47 cents in 1980.

Richard, it is possible that if you were in a Class IV org out on the fringes the staff may have been told all kinds of stuff that didn’t come from Hubbard.

Wynski – Okay. Thanks for corrections here and below.

The 2nd round was also blamed on inflation. I read the issue when it came out as it was required by Qual.

I was single and didn’t have any obligations and got by and always had an old car to drive. Car insurance wasn’t required and gas was cheap. Memories – lol

Like any other concern (profit or no) 100% of income cannot go towards payroll. Business average is ~25%. Maybe 35% for non-profits. Most orgs had rent, utilities, royalties, mandatory book stock levels, mandatory promotional outlay, mandatory PTF (payments to Flag aka Sea Org Reserves), etc.

Per the Humanitarian Hubtard staff pay comes AFTER he gets his cut of the pie.

Wynski – The first round of monthly price increases started in 1976 and was blamed on inflation. A second round started some years later which is why I blew and joined the Great Exodus in LA. It might have been blamed on needing to build up a “defense fund” for scientology but I’m not sure about that.