Scientology officials
The Church of Scientology network operates as a multinational conglomerate of companies with personnel, executives, organizational charts, chains of command, policies and orders.
Hierarchy of staff
Church of Scientology 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 and is senior to those under them.Scientology members 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. 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. Members who recruit people for Scientology services are called "field staff members" and are paid a commission of 10–15% of the amount the new person pays.
Employment structure
Staff contracts
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".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.
Pay
Staff hold posts where they are either given a small fixed allowance or are paid based on a share-percentage of the organization's weekly gross receipts. 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.Production
Staff are required to keep "stats" —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. For example, certain conditions below "Normal" may preclude getting paid at all.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, a forced labor and re-indoctrination program. Removing a staff member 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.
Training
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" which consists of Hubbard writings pertaining to that post and other writeups written by those who held the post before.Enhancement
Staff are recruited with promises that they are expected to train or be audited for 2.5 hours per day worked, but in reality enhancement time is usually bumped for the latest emergency—called a "flap" —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, 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 or breaks their contract by leaving before its term completion, they are immediately invoiced for all services rendered during their employment. 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.
If a person leaves before their contract termination date without performing specific steps for leaving, they are considered "blown" and such individuals will often be declared suppressive.