John,
I have been digging around on the Net to find something more recent and I am at the point of just emailing some Scientologist boards to see how this has progessed since 2001. According to my research so far with the Dept of Labor there's a 3 year statute of labor on wilfull intent to bypass the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
[My totally lay position is that naive young people are coerced into taking a vow of poverty through compounded lies and groupthink and are stuck, dependent on the WTS system with no hope of even social security to fall back on. As such all full-time workers of the WTS are due minimum wage if they worked in commercial positions such as the factory and distribution. At that point taxes would be due, and room and board at bethel would be taxable. Even if the bethelites returned their net payroll to the WTS about half of it would go in the form of taxes of one sort or other. The net result is some money toward old age for the past and future bethelites, the government would get its share and the WTS would be out hundreds of millions, at least. I would also argue that this could go deeper such as property taxes on factory property, use taxes on purchases, fines and interest, legal fees, and retirement funds for long-term service.]
My current "Amway Math" on this part only goes like this:
Bethelites who served the WTS within the prior 3 years, as a result of a class-action lawsuit receive minimum wages for 3 years. I assume there are 10,000 people in the western world that falls into this category. So here's goes the math :
10,000 employees for 3 years = 30,000 times an average of $5.00 per hour for 40 hours for 50 weeks =
30000 x 5 x 40 x 50 = $300 million
$300 million, plus 50% in taxes = $450 million, by the time the bethelites and the WTS pay their taxes that's $225 million to the governments, free money and not from our pockets.
I don't see this as a question of choice - you are either subject to federal law or you're not. The FLSA keeps getting refined. Most recent is a tighter definition of who is exempt from overtime pay, for example.
I agree with you this is an area ripe for change. There's been hundreds of thousands full-time unpaid sales people who have given from their need to create a multi-billion dollar empire. The WTS leaders have been disingenious with their employees, adherents, the governments and the world at large. It's time to pay up.
Best regards,
Glen
