Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit against their former employer after they were wrongfully dismissed for refusing to undergo compulsory “religious” indoctrination. Alexander Godelman, the former CIO, and Marc Le Shay allege that the owner of Diskeeper, Craig Jensen, forced them to “study, learn, and apply the fundamental principles of the Scientology religion”. Their refusal to comply with this company requirement (Godelman and Le Shay are both Jewish) led to the termination of their employment on October 16th, 2006. The two plaintiffs allege that the firing was unlawful according to the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, which is supposed to prevent discrimination because of age, race, sex, disability, and religion, among other things.
Clearly, this is a violation of California and even Federal law. But the lawyers for Diskeeper argued that the lawsuit ought to be dismissed in a “motion to strike” filed in December. The motion alleges Godelman and Le Shay “seek to have the Court dismantle Mr. Jensen’s and defendent’s entire way of doing business, as these methods, the Hubbard Management Technology and the Hubbard Study Technology, are supposedly religious”. In a word, yes: they are definitely religious. Study Technology is supposedly a “secular” off-shoot of the “spiritual technology” of the “Church” of Scientology. Yet, in an executive directive issued in 1972, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote “Study Tech is our primary bridge to Society”. The Study Tech manuals often bear striking similarities to the “Church” of Scientology’s “religious” literature. You can find examples of that in this essay written by Columbia University professor Dr. David Touretzky.
For a time, the insurance company AllState trained it’s managment using Hubbard Management Technology. Scientology concepts such as the “tone scale” and the concept of “up stats” were taught to upper level management from 1988 to 1992. The whole “up stat” concept is what also drives the “religious” aspect of Scientology: in this Hubbard Policy Letter, L. Ron Hubbard wrote:
We are not in the business of being good boys and girls. We’re in the business of going free and getting the org production roaring. Nothing else is of any interest then to Ethics but (a) getting tech in, getting it run and getting it run right and (b) getting production up and the org roaring along. Therefore if a staff member is getting production up by having his own statistic excellent. Ethics sure isn’t interested. But if a staff member isn’t producing, shown by his bad statistic for his post, Ethics is fascinated with his smallest misdemeanor.
A “stat” in Scientology is an individual new recruit to Scientology, so if a Scientology staff member brings in a lot of new recruits, they are considered “up stat” and “[i]n short a staff member can get away with murder so long as his statistic is up and can’t sneeze without a chop if it’s down”.
With enough proof, plaintiffs Godelman and Le Shay can prove that Diskeeper, which is a major supplier of software to Microsoft, improperly forced “religious” indoctrination on them, violating their First Amendment rights.
But what if Diskeeper is successful in getting the lawsuit dismissed? This could pave the way for an evangelical Christian to require all employees to attend church on Sunday. Or for a Muslim to require all female employees to wear the hijab, regardless of their faith.
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9 responses
There is an extent to which one wonders whether the “free market of ideas” should be allowed to run its course. If they keep trying to force ideas and training like this on their employees, presumably fewer people will be willing to work for them. In the end, the undesirability of those working conditions will be reflected in the failure of the company….. or that’s the theory, right?
Scientology has long tried to have its cake and eat it too, straddling the line and being a religion when it suited them and not when it didn’t. To try to force anyone to engage in religious indoctrination of any kind is absurd and doesn’t belong in any business. Forcing it on Jews with the history of things being forced on them is even more bad taste.
I hope they take it in the shorts for this.
Clearly a case of scientology bigotry and discrimination.
Anonymous seems to give scientology its Caek and makes them eat it too!
“But the lawyers for Diskeeper argued that the lawsuit ought to be dismissed in a “motion to strike” filed in December.”
The above is not correct. Diskeeper’s motion to strike is only requesting that the court strike certain elements from the plaintiff’s complaint, namely the requests for an injunction that would prohibit Diskeeper from using Hubbard Management Tech in the future. Diskeeper did not move to dismiss.
While a court is unlikely to issue such a broad injunction after all is said and done, it is also unlikely to strike the injunction requests from the complaint before the fact finding stage of the litigation has even commenced.
Being an former employee at this company they function solid administrative and baseline fundamentals. However they do discriminate primarily at an executive and mid-management level. Few if any employees at those positions are non-Scientologists. And all members holding that level of a title are ‘required’ to attend courses at either CC, ‘Ship’, or an affiliated center.
Executive Software or Diskeeper Corp now, should come clean on that out-point. ESI (Diskeeper) will continue to operate utilizing the Tech and rightfully so. I think people would respect that and build strong affinity for this Org. That would result in an upstat and support Craig’s true purpose in the long term.
What’s true, is true.
As another former employee, I agreed with some points made by “Admin Tech” and disagreed with many other. One thing that really bugged me was if one of the scientologists saw you taking an aspirin for a headache, you were sent to Ethics because you must be pts(potential trouble source). This is because of the religions position on using medications for any type of illnes. Because they believe that the mind can control anything, including ailments, they’re against drugs of any kind. What that has to do with running the business is beyond me, unless, of course you’re bringing your relgious beliefs into the workplace. Why not allow the Christians to force you to pray whenever your sales are down, and if you don’t, you’re fired. How about the fact that they make you create a model in clay that describes what your position in he company is without any type of descriptive notes other than labels stating what each object is supposed to be. In order for you to pass and be “fully hatted”, someone with no idea what they’re looking at must be able to figure out what you created. These “clay demos” could take days, even weeks to create because you have to show your relationship to every dept in the entire company. I’ve seen Professionals run out of that place almost crying from having to play with clay or they couldn’t start the job they were hired to do. Oh, and don’t let anyone see you yawn. They will make you word clear (a process where they pick out random words and you give the definition. if you don’t know it, you have to go not just look up the definition, but every defintion listed, plus the derivation, where the work came from) Take all that and you might say,well, if it works why not. Biggest complaint for me was, that the CEO still did whatever the hell he wanted to do, He would bypass people, make decisions without following the procedures everyone else was required to. It ’s a hypocritcal and it pissed a lot of us “wogs” as the scientologists call non-scientologists.
It’s insane
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