Scientology's Paramilitary "Sea Org" is Looking for Suckers

A recently-leaked 2009 issue of "International Scientology News" features a large advertisement recruiting for Scientology's paramilitary organization and pretend-Navy, the Sea Organization. To anyone who didn't know better (which apparently includes the 50,000 remaining Scientologists worldwide), to join the "Sea Org" is as honorable an endeavor as such legitimate public service as joining the military forces of one's own country. Those fancy uniforms must mean that the Sea Org is very important, right? Unfortunately for Scientology, being in the Sea Org is about as useless a thing as anyone can do. Moreover, it is really an intensification of Scientology brainwashing and in many ways is even a kind of slavery.

Would you be interested in working for an organization for which the following statements are true?

• Employees are housed in compounds, behind fences with locked gates and mounted security cameras.
• Employees are bused between the workplace and their locked housing compound, which is too far away to walk or bike (and which isn’t allowed anyway).
• Employees may not leave the housing compound without permission.
• Employees are forbidden to own or use cell phones and have no access to public telephones. If they make a call on company phones, they must first obtain permission, schedule it, and the call is always monitored.
• Foreign employees have their passports confiscated and locked in a company safe. US citizens who have passports also have their passports confiscated and locked in the safe.
• Most employees routinely have expired drivers licenses as their only form of identification (if they have even that).
• Employees are often transferred from business entity to business entity within the organization, and very seldom with any traditional administrative/personnel paperwork being done with the new entity (I-9, W-4, applications, transfer papers, etc.).
• There is a whole department dedicated to the obtaining of visas for foreign nationals, and a basic procedure to lie about the reason for a visa, which is contrary to the actual use of the visa.
• Foreign personnel who are “out of status” (visa expired) are sometimes transferred to other locations and their names changed
• Employees’ normal work hours are from 8 am to 11 pm daily, seven days a week, and they are routinely kept working until 2 am or 3 am. Many times they are kept working throughout the night with no chance of being bused back to their housing compound.
• Employees are not fed sufficiently, either because they are forbidden a meal break, given only a few minutes to eat, or the food provided is inadequate. Long term employees are often underweight.
• The employees are paid less than minimum wage. (At most, $50/week. Some employees are not paid at all.)
• The employees are given little to no medical or dental care — and only in emergency situations, if then. Many employees have rotting teeth and haven’t seen a dentist in years. Medical problems are often neglected or the person forbidden from seeking medical help outside the employer (who does not provide a doctor or nurse on site).
• The employees are not covered by any form of social welfare or retirement benefits and often the employer has not registered the person’s meager wages with social security.
• The employer threatens the employee with enormous debts should they consider leaving; and has routinely billed and collected from those who have left.
• The employer threatens the employee with throwing out the person who will then be indigent. Most employees have no money, no assets and long since lost contact with their families. They fear being indigent.
• The employees routinely do not have any form of bank account for their assets, and most have no assets because they are paid insufficiently to require a bank account. The employees are usually paid in cash.
• The employer opens all employee personal mail and reads it and censors it — passing on only those bits the employer deems okay.
• The employees are not free to roam independently around the local area unsupervised and unaccompanied. When allowed to roam accompanied and supervised, they are told where they can and cannot go. The local area they are allowed to roam in is covered by employer’s security cameras.
• The employees are forbidden to tell others about their living and working conditions. The employees are taught to be fearful of those outside this employment and have been taught that law enforcement and social services are enemies. They are taught and practiced in how to lie about their conditions.
• At employer’s work location, there are none of the usual Labor Law posters available for viewing of the employees. Employees are unable to learn of their worker rights by normal means.
• Employees are forbidden to watch, and are denied access to, televisions and newspapers. They have little to no access to information about the world outside their work and living compounds.
• Employees are forbidden access to the Internet and email, and are prevented from accessing the Internet.
• All sex between workers (including those married to each other) is discouraged, and female workers who become pregnant undergo extreme pressure and duress to get them to abort the pregnancy — including denying them access to their husbands to discuss the matter.
• Employees who “run” are sought out and returned with physical force and psychological coercion. Other employees practice procedures to hunt down people who “run”. Employees deemed “flight risks” due to something they have said to another, are kept under surveillance and guarded and restrained by security personnel.
• The employer maintains another compound, somewhere else, where employees work and live on the premises, without busing. This compound is fenced with security fencing (including razor-sharp inward-facing spikes, vibration detectors, flood lights, cameras, and electronic notification systems), security personnel at all gates (with guns), and it’s rare that any employees are allowed out. Some of the employees haven’t been out of that compound in years.
• The employer maintains a punishment work detail for those whom it deems troublemakers. This work detail is not allowed to speak with anyone, works a minimum of 10 hours of hard manual labor a day, gets substandard nutrition provided for meals, and gets a maximum of 7 hours of sleep per night. The employer also maintains an extra-punishment work detail for those who do not cooperate with the regular punishment work detail. Those poor souls work continuously, and get a maximum of 6 hours of sleep per night.
• Employees wear fancy pseudo-Naval uniforms for photo-ops and special events, and follow a pretend-Naval hierarchy of "rank."
• Employer employs several thousand personnel throughout the USA.

All these things are true of the Scientology cult's "Sea Organization" (Sea Org)!