Is Captain David Miscavige’s Claim of 6601 Sea Org Members Real? Or Are There Far Fewer?

[Type4_PTS]

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This is a very provocative subject matter, but interestingly--whenever the subject of Scientology's wildly inflated membership numbers comes up on ESMB (or other Scieno-centric venues) most of the discussion revolves around just how badly Scientology's leaders lie.

That's a very entertaining subject!

However, a far more fascinating topic is why Scientology's leaders lie in the first place!

Scientology's leaders lie because lying is an essential part of that "religion". It's absolutely necessary if you follow the Scientology "scriptures".

 

[Riddick]

but they need a building, power and heat, desk, phone, internet, office supplies, materials, and so on. and a certain amount of training expense, including sending people to courses and seminars, is legitimate in any organization, if typically distorted bizarrely in scientology. it adds up to significant amounts pretty quickly, even if people aren't paid.

the mortgae for the building was paid off by the Ideal Org campaign paid by public and Jim Fitzgerald and the other ED who donated lots for that thru their business, tax right off donations which was also promoted as tax write-off for public donating to the Ideal Org, so rent is free you might say. Now, you are only left with operating expenses, one or two local public buying services at10k a month covers it, you only need a local whale or two you might say, a successful dentist, chiro, software engineer, etc. who continually buys not knowing they are keeping the place alive, but that doesn't mean they are expanding, just means surviving at the local org. If you multipy this at number of orgs, and you also have to remember the Sea Org gets a certain percentage, well a small amout of money flows uplines, you may not understand this or maybe you will.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

Just because they post a photo doesn't mean they put all of their staff in it, you can't keep assuming that. These just look like promo photos, one is a holiday photo and the others a generic recruitment/come into the org type thing. They also seem to only take pictures with younger staff.

It's a shame that first photo you posted isn't higher quality, I can't make out any faces, so I can't tell if it's D or F or both.

I always assumed SFO had done much better about retaining their staff, and that they were still closer to 100 staff. I'll say this much, I know there are a few orgs that still have 50ish staff between D & F, that's for sure. Maybe SFO is one of those orgs but I thought they had done better and were more in the 75-100 range.

again, that would be too much to extrapolate from one photo or even one org, but when i've spent years keeping an eye on their promo pieces that show up at Tony's and Mike's, and checking orgs' social media accounts, and other than SF and Tampa i don't see any with that size staff, rather more like that size public at best, that would indeed seem to be the best they can come up with.

i'd expect orgs would proudly post pictures of their whole staff to show off and perhaps demonstrate that they're already a quarter of the way to Saint Hill size (isn't that about what 50 would be?), or to picture a small crowd of say a hundred or so gathered for a big graduation or LRH's birthday. and i see nothing like that.

they would practically have to have a policy to hide their other larger orgs' staff and public size, to account for the lack of photos. it's a mystery....

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

again, that would be too much to extrapolate from one photo or even one org, but when i've spent years keeping an eye on their promo pieces that show up at Tony's and Mike's, and checking orgs' social media accounts, and other than SF and Tampa i don't see any with that size staff, rather more like that size public at best, that would indeed seem to be the best they can come up with.

i'd expect orgs would proudly post pictures of their whole staff to show off and perhaps demonstrate that they're already a quarter of the way to Saint Hill size (isn't that about what 50 would be?), or to picture a small crowd of say a hundred or so gathered for a big graduation or LRH's birthday. and i see nothing like that.

they would practically have to have a policy to hide their other larger orgs' staff and public size, to account for the lack of photos. it's a mystery....

Oops I just had to delete my post because it might have inadvertently doxed or compromised someone I spoke to once that was "under the radar" and in "good standing" with the Church of Scientology. I haven't spoken to or seen them in years, but just in case they are still trying to hide their disaffection I should not give too much info.

It confirmed what you posted with a hilarious example of how Scientology INFLATES their show of staff members whilst doing everything possible to hide the real (and humiliating) numbers.

I'll just say this. What if a big crowd of Scientologists went to a "grand opening" of an Ideal Org and they listened to boastful speechifying that the new org had 172 staff members. A ludicrous and obvious lie. (I saw the "illegal" hidden-cam videotape at that time). What if months later someone was being recruited for staff there and they asked the org's top exec "How many staff members do you really have?" and the answer was 16. They didn't join staff. LOL.

The real number was only 10% of the lie number. This is not the least bit unusual in Scientololgy when considering that they promote they have 16M members when they really have only about 16,000 or 1% of the lie number.

It's well known policy that Scientology does maniacal "call ins" to confirm people's attendance at events. And for big events like a grand opening, they fly or bus people in from outlying orgs to fluff it up and make it look like there is "standing room only". All lies of course. Once the event is over and all the acting "extras" bus back home to neighboring states, the booming org instantly becomes a depressing ghost town.

If Scientology can recruit someone to show up at an event or show up for a group photograph they will. In fact they will exert enormous pressure on Scientologists to pose for fake photos. The point here is after all the lying and faking the fact that there are very few people in the photo or in the video only proves that the organization is so severely compromised that they cannot even FAKE a "crowd" any more with very few exceptions (e.g. a "Flag" event where all staff and public and Clearwater Scientologists can fill most of their venue once a year).

These kinds of stories make me wonder. When Scientologists attend these RAH-RAH events and hear these CRINGY-CRAZY lies, what percentage of them is silently thinking: "Wow that was total bullshit!"

SUMMARY: Have I mentioned recently that the masters of The Modern Science of Mental Health are mentally ill?

.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

the mortgae for the building was paid off by the Ideal Org campaign paid by public and Jim Fitzgerald and the other ED who donated lots for that thru their business, tax right off donations which was also promoted as tax write-off for public donating to the Ideal Org, so rent is free you might say. Now, you are only left with operating expenses, one or two local public buying services at10k a month covers it, you only need a local whale or two you might say, a successful dentist, chiro, software engineer, etc. who continually buys not knowing they are keeping the place alive, but that doesn't mean they are expanding, just means surviving at the local org. If you multipy this at number of orgs, and you also have to remember the Sea Org gets a certain percentage, well a small amout of money flows uplines, you may not understand this or maybe you will.

thanks for that info.

i did a bit of back-of-napkin calculating. i found that the average cost of utilities for a commercial buildings is $2.10 per square foot, and maintenance and operating costs are almost as much, but let's assume orgs are skimping on those (which will come back to bite them in the long run, at least when the buildings are sold someday) and call it $3 psf total. so for example Chicago's new 50k sf building is going to cost it $150k per year (and is probably costing it a significant part of that, just sitting empty and unused).

if the org's existing building in Chicago is 15k sf which seems to be standard for an org, it looks like the low end for rents (and their old building may be even lower) in the area they're in now is $15 psf, or $225k, with $45k building costs on top of it for $270k total.

so an org like Chicago that moves into a big new building may only be saving about half the cost of occupancy -- assuming the international landlord is letting them get by rent-free. i doubt that's how it's supposed to work -- does anyone know for sure? -- but i bet when things get really desperate for the orgs they're being allowed to write IOUs or something, as they slowly slip into insolvency and having to be effectively subsidized to keep their doors open.

also, some of the orgs like KC apparently owned old their buildings themselves. so presumably their costs will have tripled or quadrupled in the new one-- maybe even one of the reasons they were sent a bunch of sea org to try to help them out.

speaking of IOUs, there are reports that some orgs have gotten into such dire straits that they did have to be bailed out, and that in at least some cases it was booked as a debt to be repaid (the sort of bogus accounting failing businesses resort to, as well as frauds like Enron). Quebec City was supposed to have been a million in the hole.

and now we know for example that NY owes over $100k in back utilities, in spite of having gotten more than that in PPP money. i suspect a lot more orgs have been pushed into the red, and that it may provide an 'emergency' pretext for starting to more routinely subsidize orgs and tap reserves that was probably inevitable anyway. but again it seems we're painfully slow to get real details of what's going on....

 

[Reyne Mayer]

I'll just say this. What if a big crowd of Scientologists went to a "grand opening" of an Ideal Org and they listened to boastful speechifying that the new org had 172 staff members. A ludicrous and obvious lie. (I saw the "illegal" hidden-cam videotape at that time). What if months later someone was being recruited for staff there and they asked the org's top exec "How many staff members do you really have?" and the answer was 16. They didn't join staff. LOL.

thanks for that interesting anecdote.

i've seen someone who says they were there for Atlanta's opening say the org really did get up that sort of number like they are supposed to, and even did things like the old ruse of hiring 'wogs' to accomplish it.

but Orlando seemed to have only gotten a dozen and a half to 2 dozen staff, from what i could tell of pictures that appeared in the week after.

and then for the Kansas City and Columbus openings they reportedly staffed up the orgs with a lot of sea org, who have remained. they were even trying to buy a big building for berthing.

it looks to me that as their fortunes decline, they are trying varying responses.

 

[Enthetan]

other photos i've seen from SF like the one below show about half the number of staff in the big picture, so i think it's reasonable to assume they are just one shift, and the picture that they went to some real effort to stage and shoot (it looks like they got a photographer into the second story of the building across the street) is everyone they can muster. again, given the CoS' penchant for going to lengths to get propaganda shots to make their numbers appear bigger than they are, why would the org be consistently taking photos that don't include all the bodies they could gather at the moment?

it is frustrating that we don't really have much better, updated information on org sizes. i keep trying to ask, but it seems even people who were in fairly recently have trouble saying how many staff there really were -- i would expect it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a reasonably accurate estimate from memory, even without formal documentation.

one thing i will say about these photos, is it looks like they might be excluding older staff in an attempt to appear young and hip (the football game photo seems to include a couple):


View attachment 17079

View attachment 17080

They could get both shifts into the picture, or at least get the most photogenic staff (and some public) from both shifts by having the picture taking occur at the time of shift change, at about 6pm.

 

[onceuponatime]

again, that would be too much to extrapolate from one photo or even one org, but when i've spent years keeping an eye on their promo pieces that show up at Tony's and Mike's, and checking orgs' social media accounts, and other than SF and Tampa i don't see any with that size staff, rather more like that size public at best, that would indeed seem to be the best they can come up with.

i'd expect orgs would proudly post pictures of their whole staff to show off and perhaps demonstrate that they're already a quarter of the way to Saint Hill size (isn't that about what 50 would be?), or to picture a small crowd of say a hundred or so gathered for a big graduation or LRH's birthday. and i see nothing like that.

they would practically have to have a policy to hide their other larger orgs' staff and public size, to account for the lack of photos. it's a mystery....

Are you just looking at what's posted publicly or are you also in any of the private groups? You might see a bit more behind the curtain if you're in the private groups. Still, looking at promo and social media stuff is not reliable for orgs. Orgs do not post stuff to social media with any regularity (maybe one or two orgs do, but there's no LRH about social media, so it's ignored for the most part) and they definitely aren't posting photos of all their staff. Social media is an after thought for most orgs. Have you actually gone through and counted faces or anything? I would be interested in those numbers.

Why would they proudly post a picture of 50 staff (between D & F) when not too long ago it was 100 or more? And they probably did have some photos/videos taken around the time they were opening, which was when they had peak numbers of staff. While staff don't really produce much, they are always busy. I think it would take an order from management to get all the staff together for a photo, and management doesn't want to show how many staff they have.

And your last point, yes they do have policy to be secretive. Scientology and orgs are secretive about their stats, numbers, everything. Posting a picture of all their staff on social media would go against their DNA. Maybe if they hit some big target and went St. Hill size we'd see a photo of everyone. Other than that, probably not.

Honestly, I'm not really willing to say more, you can believe what you want. I'm not that familiar with WUS so I don't have complete faith in my numbers, just know that what I'm posting is an educated guess (I'll let you decide how educated). I can say for sure there are at least some orgs left in America with 50ish staff between D & F. How many orgs, exact numbers, well I'm not going to try and dig that much. Or post that info even if I had it

They could get both shifts into the picture, or at least get the most photogenic staff (and some public) from both shifts by having the picture taking occur at the time of shift change, at about 6pm.

They could, but I doubt they did it. I've never heard of photos of both crews being taken outside of when they opened as Ideal. If we had a higher resolution photo we could make out faces. I'm sure someone could tell us if that was D or F or both.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

Are you just looking at what's posted publicly or are you also in any of the private groups? You might see a bit more behind the curtain if you're in the private groups. Still, looking at promo and social media stuff is not reliable for orgs. Orgs do not post stuff to social media with any regularity (maybe one or two orgs do, but there's no LRH about social media, so it's ignored for the most part) and they definitely aren't posting photos of all their staff. Social media is an after thought for most orgs. Have you actually gone through and counted faces or anything? I would be interested in those numbers.

Mike Rinder and sometimes Tony Ortega get internal PR pieces, and yes i count faces (or backs of heads) in those and anything else i can find. after a couple of years of paying attention to anything that is to be seen, i think i have a fairly good idea. and if most orgs are only gathering fewer than 50 members in photos of big events, they can't have that many staff either.

i think it's telling that we have pictures of about 50 staff at the two local orgs that might be expected to be the largest (SF, which was something of a surprise to me, though i get it now, and it is in one of the highest concentrations of wealthy scientologists in the world in their California stronghold; and Tampa), but not any others.

here's a report about San Diego:

When I got a tour of all 4 floors of the org a few years ago, I got a look at the org board. Trying not to appear obvious, there were many slots for 'hats' (jobs), but I only quickly counted about a dozen names that were handling all of them. This was about a year after it went 'ideal'.

SD has a metro area population of 3.3 million, and i think they're probably pretty typical of orgs in cities in the 2-10 million population range, with a dozen to 2 dozen staff (and 3 to 6 dozen active members). there seems to be a rough general correlation between city size and org size, and of course some complete exceptions.

i know the one org that i had the best info on close to 10 years ago, is now probably down at least a third in size. could it be that the number of orgs with 50 or more staff members is down to just 2 with closer to 50 staff, with most others half or less of that, and that adjusted for losses in recent years our estimates aren't all that different?

 

[onceuponatime]

Mike Rinder and sometimes Tony Ortega get internal PR pieces, and yes i count faces (or backs of heads) in those and anything else i can find. after a couple of years of paying attention to anything that is to be seen, i think i have a fairly good idea. and if most orgs are only gathering fewer than 50 members in photos of big events, they can't have that many staff either.

i think it's telling that we have pictures of about 50 staff at the two local orgs that might be expected to be the largest (SF, which was something of a surprise to me, though i get it now, and it is in one of the highest concentrations of wealthy scientologists in the world in their California stronghold; and Tampa), but not any others.

here's a report about San Diego:



SD has a metro area population of 3.3 million, and i think they're probably pretty typical of orgs in cities in the 2-10 million population range, with a dozen to 2 dozen staff (and 3 to 6 dozen active members). there seems to be a rough general correlation between city size and org size, and of course some complete exceptions.

i know the one org that i had the best info on close to 10 years ago, is now probably down at least a third in size. could it be that the number of orgs with 50 or more staff members is down to just 2 with closer to 50 staff, with most others half or less of that, and that adjusted for losses in recent years our estimates aren't all that different?

I think overall we agree, I do think most orgs have less than 20 staff. There are about 10 orgs that I think might still have 50ish staff between D & F. I'm not saying for sure all of these have that many staff, maybe only half do, maybe less. But I am sure a few of these are still in the 50ish range. And that isn't counting Tampa and SFO, who I still think have closer to 75-100. Also not counting the SO orgs.

New York
DC
Cincinnati

Portland
Sacramento
Pasadena
Valley
Ventura
OC
San Diego

The WUS ones, and especially the LA area ones, are the hardest for me to gauge. From what I've heard, the LA orgs kind of ebb and flow between themselves. For awhile one will be bigger, then it will fall off and another one will get bigger. Overall the field, number of staff, etc. is staying the same, but how it's divided among the LA orgs will change.

Not sure exactly how many of these orgs are still in the 50ish staff range, and maybe only 3 or so are still in that range, but I'd guess that at a minimum 3 of these orgs have 50ish staff. And maybe I'm forgetting an org or two that still has 50ish staff, MV or Los Gatos could surprise me.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

Not sure exactly how many of these orgs are still in the 50ish staff range, and maybe only 3 or so are still in that range, but I'd guess that at a minimum 3 of these orgs have 50ish staff. And maybe I'm forgetting an org or two that still has 50ish staff, MV or Los Gatos could surprise me.

thanks for the further detail.

i could see that it might be 3, the LA org in particular seems hard to judge.

what do you think of the report i quoted, that San Diego only had about a dozen individuals holding all the positions on their org board a couple of years ago?

i checked Valley's social media, and they're just reposting pictures of things like SF's holiday shots of a dozen and half to two dozen staff and public, so i would assume that's what they look up to but can't compete with. instead they resort to posting pictures of their vast new space empty, and reposting old pics of the crowd that attended their 'opening' 4 years ago as if it represented what's happened more recently:

 

[LaffyHypnotizedMe]

Yes, separate staff, separate org boards, everything. You can look at the recent leak from NY org for confirmation.

But as far as the birthday game goes, everything gets reported as one org. I.e. you don't have Tampa Day and Tampa Foundation, it's just Tampa. What they do is still report everything separately but then add up the points and put them together. Tampa Day will make 30 points and then Tampa Foundation will make 35, it gets reported as Tampa made 65.

They really are separate orgs though. Different staff members, different FPs, etc.

Every other business calls that 2nd shift. I don't recall that degree of separation at Seattle org but is' been decades since I've been out. Does the ED change from Day to Foundation too?

 

[Enthetan]

Every other business calls that 2nd shift. I don't recall that degree of separation at Seattle org but is' been decades since I've been out. Does the ED change from Day to Foundation too?

It's called second shift when both shifts are under the command of one executive.

In orgs, Day and Foundation are under different ED's, who report to the FOLO/CLO/whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

It's called second shift when both shifts are under the command of one executive.

In orgs, Day and Foundation are under different ED's, who report to the FOLO/CLO/whatever-the-hell-they-call-it-now.

good point. in any normal business or organization, it's no big deal, and is managed more or less seamlessly.

it's interesting to see those here who are taken aback, somewhat understandably given their background, at the merger of D and F at orgs. but it's just what should be done in any rational management scheme in modern times, especially as most orgs shrink back to the size of the '50s before LRH created the division.

 

[cakemaker]

A few issues,

 

[Reyne Mayer]

A few issues,

thanks for that, interesting to see.

i note that orgs have been consistently off policy since the days of 'source':



so i'm curious to know and understand, which is more off policy-er, that, which went on week in and week out in the vast majority of the orgs for the rest of the 27 years of the Commodore's reign and life and has continued and worsened (especially if you factor in inflation) for the 35 years since, or combining D & F?

p.s. also, how does 'any org...moonlight'? i thought that was something individual staff resorted to....

 

[cakemaker]

thanks for that, interesting to see.

i note that orgs have been consistently off policy since the days of 'source':

View attachment 17173

so i'm curious to know and understand, which is more off policy-er, that, which went on week in and week out in the vast majority of the orgs for the rest of the 27 years of the Commodore's reign and life and has continued and worsened (especially if you factor in inflation) for the 35 years since, or combining D & F?

p.s. also, how does 'any org...moonlight'? i thought that was something individual staff resorted to....

Non Sea Org staff have never been paid a livable wage - perhaps in the 1950's before Saint Hill and World Wide, one of the first management orgs.
After that a system call Proportional Pay went into effect where staff would get a percentage of the income after expenses were subtracted.
It's a rigged game where the bulk of the money is siphoned off uplines leaving the local org to struggle to pay its bills and if anything is left, its staff.

Combining D and F is a different topic. Apples and oranges.
Not paying staff (in spite of policies that say orgs should) is impossible because of the way Scientology finances are set up.

Orgs don't moonlight.
Just staff in order to survive.

 

[onceuponatime]

thanks for the further detail.

i could see that it might be 3, the LA org in particular seems hard to judge.

what do you think of the report i quoted, that San Diego only had about a dozen individuals holding all the positions on their org board a couple of years ago?

Well, with ideal orgs you have two separate org boards posted. A dozen doesn't sound too far off for an org like San Diego, but that's just day or foundation, I would expect a similar amount on the other shift. So that would put the minimum staff at around 25-30 for San Diego. Wouldn't shock me if one shift had more or less tho, so overall they could have less than 20 or still something like 50. I'd peg it more like 25-30 tho based on the data we have. With only 12ish on each shift I'd say they are barely keeping the door open. Once a D or F gets to 30ish staff I'd say they can pretend to produce something, though they are never efficient about it.

Every other business calls that 2nd shift. I don't recall that degree of separation at Seattle org but is' been decades since I've been out. Does the ED change from Day to Foundation too?

Yes, ED and all other posts change. There's a ton of redundant posts and it's incredibly inefficient. Day isn't supposed to help/do things for foundation and vice versa.

good point. in any normal business or organization, it's no big deal, and is managed more or less seamlessly.

it's interesting to see those here who are taken aback, somewhat understandably given their background, at the merger of D and F at orgs. but it's just what should be done in any rational management scheme in modern times, especially as most orgs shrink back to the size of the '50s before LRH created the division.

Yes, it would make sense and be way more efficient to merge the orgs. But it's off policy. So orgs will never be merged like that.

thanks for that, interesting to see.

i note that orgs have been consistently off policy since the days of 'source':

View attachment 17173

so i'm curious to know and understand, which is more off policy-er, that, which went on week in and week out in the vast majority of the orgs for the rest of the 27 years of the Commodore's reign and life and has continued and worsened (especially if you factor in inflation) for the 35 years since, or combining D & F?

p.s. also, how does 'any org...moonlight'? i thought that was something individual staff resorted to....

I think by the org he's talking about the staff of the org, i.e. day org moonlighting, day org staff moonlighting.

Also, that reference is talking about GIBY, not actually paying each staff that amount. If you had 50 staff and made 50K GI you'd have 1K GIBY. But then you'd have stuff taken off the top and the actual pay would depend on what pay system they were using (there's been a number of pay systems over the years). Typically the pay system takes about 30% of GI and allocates that to staff pay, so with 50K GI you'd get about 15K allocated to staff pay, nowhere near enough to pay 50 people.

And that's without even getting into "PR" policy letters and actual/operating policies. In my opinion, pretty much any policy that talks about treating staff well, respecting them, paying them well, etc. is a "PR" policy and not something that is actually operated on.

 

[Enthetan]

Non Sea Org staff have never been paid a livable wage - perhaps in the 1950's before Saint Hill and World Wide, one of the first management orgs.
After that a system call Proportional Pay went into effect where staff would get a percentage of the income after expenses were subtracted.
It's a rigged game where the bulk of the money is siphoned off uplines leaving the local org to struggle to pay its bills and if anything is left, its staff.

Combining D and F is a different topic. Apples and oranges.
Not paying staff (in spite of policies that say orgs should) is impossible because of the way Scientology finances are set up.

Orgs don't moonlight.
Just staff in order to survive.

When I was on org staff, the pay was such that it barely was worth while to go fetch your pay... a few dollars a week. I worked a day job to pay my bills. After a year or so, the lack of sleep got to me and I routed off.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

Well, with ideal orgs you have two separate org boards posted. A dozen doesn't sound too far off for an org like San Diego, but that's just day or foundation, I would expect a similar amount on the other shift. So that would put the minimum staff at around 25-30 for San Diego.

would the org boards be in different places in a building, so a visitor might see one but not the other?

either way, it doesn't sound like like San Diego is one of the orgs that's got 50 staff. two dozen or so seems typical of what i've seen or heard of other orgs, and my impression is that's the norm these days.

and my quip about the org moonlighting, was pointing to a mistake of grammar or composition that LRH must have made, that was never proofread or corrected. if you take it literally -- which is what you're supposed to do, right? -- it makes no sense.