This was posted to the Operation Clambake discussion board:

http://discus.xenu.net/discus/messages/1510/1667.html?1004903603#POST21912

Posted by Don Carlo, Sunday, November 04, 2001 - 08:34 pm Every US worker is entitled to a living wage according to US law.

I'm not a lawyer and this post is not legal advice, just a summary of facts off the Internet. Please notify me of any mistakes you find.

A U.S. employee, even a church worker, must be paid the federal minimum wage, $5.15 per hour, or the state minimum wage, whichever is higher. Here is the federal minimum wage law website:

http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/minwage/mwposter.htm Here are the states' minimum wage laws. California minimum wage is $6.25, so the LA org MUST pay $6.25 or more to every staff member no matter what their stats or RPF situation is. Florida has no minimum wage law, so Flag in Clearwater better pay federal minimum wage.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/minwage/america.htm Here are the child labor laws.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_570/toc.htm An exempt employee must be paid higher than minimum wage, receives a salary, and does not get overtime. A non-exempt employee (an hourly worker) gets at least minimum wage and gets time-and-a-half for overtime (working over 40 hours a week).

Since Scientology charges so much for their courses, they may try to argue that the org worker gets "paid" by getting free courses.

However, there is no barter allowed under federal minimum wage laws.

Employees are not supposed to be paid in corn, peanuts, or courses.

They are supposed to be paid in U.S. dollars, which they can then spend on corn, peanuts, or courses as they choose. If they work at a University, they usually can take courses for free anyway!

If a U.S. religious group is running short of money at the end of a week, it must first pay the IRS and state taxes, THEN pay its ALL its employees, THEN pay rent, phone, dues to headquarters, etc. If not, the church is subject to civil penalties and criminal liabilities.

If, on Friday, the church has just BARELY paid its members, and has no reasonable hope of paying them for the next two weeks, it must notify its people not to come to work until further notice. In real life, some will work in hope of payment, but they are volunteers.

Volunteers are a very special category. My own church has a paid minister, religious education specialist, sexton, and music director.

Our soloist soprano, alto, tenor, and bass in the choir are independent contractors. EVERYONE ELSE works on a strictly volunteer basis, on fund-raisers, feed-the-homeless, etc. In this situation, a volunteer should NEVER be paid anything - neither money nor room and board nor "free tuition" for courses.

Sometimes volunteers try to give a hard working volunteer "honorarium." This is legally risky. If it is above a certain amount you must issue a Form 1099. If it becomes a regular payment the person becomes either an Employee or an Independent Contractor. There are no other categories under law, so any "Billion Year Contract" would be unenforceable under state and federal law.

An Independent Contractor must control his own hours of work, his own tools, and should be working for other churches or companies. For example, all our paid soloists work at weddings and other music groups. I suppose some Scientology lawyers and private investigators have this set up. No problem there.

So Scientology orgs must decide if each staff worker is (1) A totally unpaid volunteer (2) An employee, or (3) An independent contractor Each of these must be treated fairly under federal law. In fact, there should be a prominent poster showing The laws concerning Minimum Wage, Overtime, Child Labor, and Enforcement. If you have Adobe Acrobat, you can read the actual poster.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/minwagebwP.pdf
It is disturbing that an Org worker can be pressured to sign a form committing himself to the RPF, which pays little or no wages at all.

He is obviously not an independent contractor, so the Org of Scientology again, has to decide if this RPF person is (1) A totally unpaid volunteer or (2) An employee A volunteer has the right to come and go, choose his own hours and own favorite work, and of course retain all civil rights.

Nope, an RPF prisoner is NOT a volunteer.
Therefore, he is an employee. Scientology has to pay minimum wage, calculate Social Security, state taxes, and federal taxes, and give him the paycheck weekly or bi-weekly. Then he gets the opportunity to cash it and save it or spend it as he likes.

A minor exception to the minimum wage law is that full-time students at an institute of higher education can be paid only 85% of the minimum wage. Even so, the student can't work more than 20 hours a week when school is in session, and can't work more than 40 hours a week during school vacations. Each student has to get a federal certificate, which only lasts a year. I don't think this applies to Scientology.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_519/29CFR519.16.htm Here is Frank Flinn, a so-called religious expert, comparing the low pay and rigor of Scientology orgs and even RPF to nuns and monks and wandering Hindu holy men.

http://www.freezone-da.com/rpfmemo.html However, he is describing outdated or even medieval practices.

Thumbscrews and serfdom and not paying minimum wage have been outlawed in the U.S. American nuns and priests receive a salary in addition to their room and board. They even pay Social Security taxes so they will get Social Security when they retire. There is no "Freeloader Bill" if they leave their job as nun or priest.

What about religious workers who get room and board? Here's a website saying the New Ulm Catholic priests make about $1000/ months which is around $6.00 / hour for a full time job. They also get food, housing, and insurance, and a special fund to use to pay for books, retreats and any other educational items. Plus four weeks vacation a year!

http://www.ourmib.org/htm/Answer.cfm?Qkey=5 Nuns get at least minimum wage too. Forget your Hollywood images from the 1950's. Show me a nun who will claim that in 2001 she is not paid minimum wage at her full-time job, and I'll show you an embarrassed and mortified Catholic Church, who will rectify the situation.

Were you a Scientology worker? Did you receive a W-2 form, or was everything undocumented as though you were a Dark Ages monk? If you can personally write the State Labor Secretary or Commissioner, telling him that you did NOT receive minimum wage or overtime in Scientology, then please do so.

FLORIDA
Secretary
Department of Labor and Employment Security
2012 Capitol Circle, S.E.
Hartman Building, Suite 303
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2152
PH: 850-922-7021
Fax: 904-488-8930
Internet: http://www.state.fl.us/dles/ CALIFORNIA
State Labor Commissioner
Division of Labor Standards Enforcement
Department of Industrial Relations
455 Golden Gate Ave.,
9th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
PH: 415-703-4810
Fax: 415-703-4807
Internet: http://www.dir.ca.gov Other states:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/contacts/state_of.htm#FL

http://discus.xenu.net/discus/messages/1510/1667.html?1004906379#POST21916 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posted by Don Carlo, Sunday, November 04, 2001 - 08:53 pm
******************* In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church didn't pay its nuns and priests much, but it DID provide them with lifetime care after they retired. It still does today. Will Scientology ever adopt THIS age-old religious tradition?

************************************* Let’s do a sample case against Scientology in the area of Social Security related to earnings. AGAIN, I’m no lawyer, but this is what I got doing some estimates, roungh calculations (rounded to keep the numbers simple), and web searches:

Assume former Scientology staff member Mark Confree (who does not exist ) worked for Scientology 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, every week in the year 2000. (I don’t have the rates for 1999):

14 hours times 7 days/ week times 52 weeks times about $5.00 an hour = about 5,000 hours.

Of these hours, 2000 (40 hrs a week times 52 weeks) hours would be regular and 3,000 hours would be overtime, which let’s say is time-and-a-half, or $7.50/hour.

$2,000 times about $5.00/hour = about $10,000.

$3,000 times about $7.50/hour = about $22,500.

So Mark Confree SHOULD have been paid about $32,500 in the year 2000, and that SHOULD have been recorded on his year 2000 W-2 form from Scientology.

His Social Security Withheld should have been about $32,500 times 6.2% = $2,015.

In addition, Scientology was supposed to match the contribution with $2,015 of its own money. So for the year 2000, Mark Confree should have accumulated on on his Social Security earnings statement a total of $4,030.

Mark learns that, for FREE and with no hassle, he get a list of his gross earnings (for example, if Scientology had paid him correctly, the $32,500 in year 2000) for every year of his working life. Here is a sample of what he can get (click on it to make it larger):

http://www.ssa.gov/mystatement/ssst3.htm He goes to this site and starts the process of applying for his own record. (A good idea for any US worker):

http://www.ssa.gov/mystatement/ From the site, Mark discovers that in the year 2000, for all that work, he got $3,000, not $32,500. He pulls out his W-2 from the year 2000 and confirms the amount was $3,000, with only $186 contributed to Social Security. Now the year 2000 should have been one of his "good"

35 earning years (the highest 35 years are used to determine how much Social Security he receives when he retires). He is getting the SHAFT.
Now I don't know whether Social Security would consider this primarily a minimum wage, problem, and send it over to the Dept. of Labor, or act on it themselves. I wish somebody could answer this question.

However, Social Security HAS a fraud hotline, in fraud includes:

QUOTE -significant mismanagement and waste of funds -standards of conduct violations.

...We treat all communications in a confidential manner and we’ll do our best to safeguard your identity. However, if you do not wish to disclose your identity, you may remain anonymous when calling or writing. END QUOTE from:

http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ifyou.htm The site also says you can't keep asking about the case. You just provide the tip and the Social Security Administration will decide whether to follow up on it.

************************* I welcome debate on this, since I am not a lawyer and am using this board to get my facts as straight as possible. I think Scientology might put up a fight about whether or not it engages in commerce (and I intend to keep looking at that). However, even if Scientology as an entity is exempt, some (or maybe all) of its employees may be doing work that qualifies them for minimum wage AS INDIVIDUALS.

Note: FLSA = Federal Labor Standards Act - controls federal minimum wage, overtime, child labor, etc.

QUOTE: Individual Coverage Even in the absence of a commercial enterprise, individual employees of a nonprofit organization may be covered by the FLSA. Employees are individually covered if, in the performance of their duties, they are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce. If, for example, employees of a nonprofit organization regularly handle interstate mail and telephone calls, or receive merchandise from out-of-state sources, they must be paid the appropriate minimum wage and must receive overtime for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. END QUOTE from http://www.ed.gov/americareads/resourcekit/Negotiating/wagehours.html My comment: Most staff members of most religions DO answer the phone and make phone calls, some of which are out-of-state calls. Thus, the religions play it safe and consider their staff covered as individuals.

I suppose if the religion is held on a remote island, which never receives interstate mail, phone calls, or Internet messages, and just worships quietly, those individuals are avoiding interstate commerce and MIGHT not have a case for getting minimum wage. But not Scientology.

Here's my unofficial, non-lawyer list of interstate commerce items that might trigger, say, a Florida individual into being covered by FLSA:

1. Answering or making out-of-state phone calls as part of the job - whether or not the topic was "religious."

2. Receiving/unpacking office supplies from Georgia 3. Pulling landscaping shrubs and fencing off a truck from North Carolina 4. Receiving and stacking L.Ron Hubbard books printed in California.

5. Sorting mail in the mailroom 6. Paying bills to a Texas consulting firm.

7. Sending money to Curacao for gas for the old Freewinds boat.

8. Handling or transporting out-of-state checks.

9. Meeting, at the airport, Scientologists flying in from out of state (I'm not sure about this yet).

10. Searching for data on out-of-state people, by, say, using Directory Assistance and the Internet.

11. Searching the net for negative stories on Scientology.

12. As part of one's job, participating in the production of videos, tapes, photos, or magazine articles which are sent out of state for sale.

**************************** THE HAPPY TO WORK FOR CHICKEN FEED ARGUMENT.

Here is another good quote from the Dept. of Ed site:

QUOTE:

An individual's motivation, such as whether he or she expects compensation for his or her labor, factors greatly in the determination of whether he or she qualifies as a volunteer.

Nonetheless, a worker may not simply waive his or her right to FLSA coverage in order to enable his or her employer to escape the wage, hour and child labor provisions. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, FLSA protection may not be waived since:

If an exception to the Act were carved out for employees willing to testify that they performed work "voluntarily," employers might be able to use superior bargaining power to coerce employees to make such assertions, or to waive their protections under the Act. END QUOTE from http://www.ed.gov/americareads/resourcekit/Negotiating/wagehours.html So, in the US, their willingness to be exploited is irrelevant.

******************** For more discussion, read all of the two threads "Pay Minimum Wage or Else, Scientology?" and "Proof Scientology Must Pay Minimum Wage to Its Workers."

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