If a high-ranking LAPD official can be believed, perhaps the Scientology-affiliated The Way To Happiness should take a page from its own teachings. Two of the Glendale-based nonprofit organization’s 21 guides to achieving happiness are “Be Worthy of Trust” and “Seek to Live the Truth,” neither of which were followed apparently in the group’s dealings with the LAPD and a city in Texas. Officials with the group, which over the past two decades has distributed booklets of the same name to ...

Harlingen — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit on behalf of former employees of Harlingen Family Dentistry who refused to attend training courses reportedly containing scientology doctrine. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Brownsville, alleges religious discrimination and retaliation against the workers. According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, scientology is "a religious movement begun in 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard which teaches immortality and reincarnation and claims a sure psychotherapeutic method for freeing the individual ...

Scientology Inc. Publishing executives in Folsom are spreading the word on technology in government. Some employees say it’s actually the words of L. Ron Hubbard that are being spread. By Jim Evans On your very first day as a new hire at e.Republic, you’re given a copy of Speaking From Experience, a management training book written by the late L. Ron Hubbard, who, during his busy lifetime, was a science fiction writer, philosopher, management guru, expert on education, and drug rehabilitation ...

GARDEN CITY - Former employees of the Internet startup iShopNoMarkup.com have filed a formal complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that company execs are bilking investors by charging the firm consulting fees through separate companies they own. Further, the former employees say the company is illegally targeting non-accredited investors - those who do not make $200,000 a year and have a $1 million net worth. The company has also spent at least $17,000 in the past six months on ...

[...] ELSEWHERE IN THE COURTS... [...] * Discrimination. Owners of a veterinary clinic in Texas have agreed to pay $150,000 to six employees who claimed they were unlawfully pressured to follow the tenets of the Church of Scientology. The employees charged that they were subjected to discrimination because of their refusal to join the church, act in accordance with its philosophy, or participate in religious activities at work. The case, which was brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was settled ...

An Arlington, Texas veterinary clinic agreed earlier this month to pay $150,000 to six employees who claimed in a suit backed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the company unlawfully pressured employees to subscribe to beliefs of the Church of Scientology (EEOC v. I-20 Animal Medical Center, N.D. Tex, 398CV2316-X, settlement approved 12/2/99). In a complaint filed Sept. 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, EEOC alleged that I-20 Animal Medical Center violated religious ...

Several months after she went to work at a Manhattan real estate firm, Karen Schwartz says her boss, developer Lawrence Feldman, ordered her to take an unusual series of night classes. Ms. Schwartz says he informed her they were simply "business courses." But when she arrived at the classroom, Ms. Schwartz couldn't have been more astonished. According to a complaint Ms. Schwartz has filed with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was subjected to something close to an indoctrination into ...

A visitor to the Internet World trade show in Los Angeles last month would have come away with the impression that Luckman Interactive was an industry powerhouse. The 3-year-old firm, which makes software and Internet directories, hung a giant banner on the side of the Los Angeles Convention Center—the only company to spring for the expense. Its booth was among the biggest at the show, rivaling those of Netscape, Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems. The company has raised more than $20 ...

One of the Church's most powerful groups is waging a holy war on the evil tide of brainwashing religious cults sweeping Scotland. Woman's Guild bosses are to hold a special summit aimed at stamping out the growing menace of the fanatics. Today, we reveal how many young Scots have fallen under the spell of these maniacs. The Guild plans two days of talks at Carberry Tower, near Edinburgh. Experts, victims and religious leaders from all Churches will debate the menace of ...

U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola dismissed the lawsuit Tuesday. The action came after Polozola adopted a report on the matter by U.S. Magistrate Stephen Riedlinger. [...]

Toronto — Allstate Insurance Co. of Canada appears to have flunked its free personality test last month after word got out that its U.S. parent put managers through training sessions based on doctrines of Scientology, the California-based church with a keen sense of cash flow. Question: Was such training done in Canada too? Allstate's answer: No. Correct answer: Yes. At least a little. Scientology is the brainchild of the late L. Ron Hubbard, a paperback novelist who in 1950 published a ...

One thing was undisputed in your March 22 page-one article, "How Allstate Applied Scientology Methods to Train Its Managers," about management seminars delivered to agents at Allstate Insurance Co.: the management technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard works. As one of the sales managers who took the seminar summed it up, Mr. Hubbard's management technology is "very powerful in its simplicity." This sentiment is echoed by hundreds of thousands of business owners, executives, employees and professionals around the world. It seems ...

Thousands of workers participated in seminars that taught them to disregard ethics in the quest for productivity Allstate Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it hired a consultant who taught "unacceptable" Church of Scientology management principles to the insurance company's agents and supervisors between 1988 and 1992. The company denied allegations some workers were hounded, intimidated and wrongfully fired as a result of the training program. Scientology is a religious-scientific movement founded in the 1950s by the late author L. Ron Hubbard that ...

Two years ago, an Allstate agent stood up at Sears's annual meeting to ask what then seemed a bizarre question. "To what extent," he inquired, "are the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology present today in Allstate and in Sears?" Edward Brennan, chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and Wayne Hedien, then-chairman of Sears's Allstate Insurance Co. unit, both appeared bewildered. Mr. Brennan said he had no knowledge of any relationship at all. Mr. Hedien said he didn't even ...

There is a story that Steve Tisch, producer of the 1983 coming-of-age classic Risky Business, the film that would eventually vault Tom Cruise into the warm aerie of megastardom, likes to tell. After a tough day of shooting, Cruise approached Tisch, his partner Jon Avnet and the film's director, Paul Brickman. It seemed Cruise was concerned: He felt that his costar, Rebecca DeMornay, a newcomer who had snatched the part of sexy hooker Lana from Michelle Pfeiffer, was miscast. Things just ...

Some of Cocolat's ex-workers claim that the company's newest ingredient is Scientology by Erin McCormick of the Examiner Staff It was once the sweetheart of the Bay Area business world - a woman-run chocolate company that grew from a single storefront to a national success. Now, two years since an employee's embezzlement forced the sale of Cocolat Chocolate Co., an unlikely mix is brewing at the company's Hayward plant: Scientology and chocolate. The mixture has been volatile. Cocolat is the latest ...

SANTA CLARA — Former employees of Applied Materials have filed suit alleging that the Silicon Valley manufacturing firm forced them to undergo Church of Scientology seminars. Trial proceedings began Tuesday as lawyers for both sides argued motions before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Frank Cliff. In their suit, former employees Steven Hunziker, Virginia Sanders and Kate Schuchmann allege that Applied Materials hired an outside firm to teach workers communication and time-management skills. But the seminar firm, Applied Scholastics of Fremont, ...

And now, the next Walt Disney Studios— the Church of Scientology! That is, if entrepreneurs connected with the Hollywood based cult can muscle into the film business with their proposal to homogenize films by tailoring them to the tastes of the unwashed masses. It all began last July, when Future Films, a new, eccentric studio, began running ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter touting its revolutionary ideas. No one knew what to make of it all. The grand concept, to ...

Scientologists emerge as creators of mystery-shrouded movie firm Is it just a movie company, this one owned and run by members of a controversial church? Or is it a front? Future Films, the mysterious movie company that arrived in Burbank and in Garland, Texas, last month with ambitious goals and a huge marketing splash, is financed and managed by a small group of high-level members of the Church of Scientology. Critics of the church, who label the religion a cult and ...

A Winnipeg company is winding down a fund-raising campaign for Narconon — a drug rehabilitation program affiliated with the Church of Scientology — after The Sun exposed Naroconon's connection to the cult last week. But about 35 teenagers selling pepperoni and T-shirts for Mr. Pepperette, a division of Wellington Food Service formed July 1, will work only until the end of the summer — and are continuing at their own request, manager Al Pringle said yesterday. "They want to stick with ...

Top management in a Winnipeg company operating a fund-raising campaign for Narconon — a drug rehabiliation program with ties to the Church of Scientology — have been involved with the church for years, former employees allege. Wellington Food Service partners Brian Knowles and Al Pringle Jr. have been cult members for at least three years, and have tried to convince company employees to join the cult, three men who worked for the company claim. "They were all into it really heavy. ...

Former employees of EST founder Werner Erhard say they were forced to obey the pop psychology guru in a manner akin to God and to submit themselves to numerous instances of verbally and physically abusive behavior. In sworn statements, the ex-employees also charge that they were required to worship Erhard as the Source and were controlled with exhausting work schedules, loyalty oaths, threats and emotional abuse. The allegations – by five former staff members of est, of the Forum and of ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on December 23, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

Three workers at a prominent Silicon Valley electronics company claim they were forced by their superiors to take communications courses taught by firms connected with the Church of Scientology – with practices that included staring into co-workers' eyes for four hours at a time to "guide and control communication." The workers said they left Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara after being harassed over their refusal to take the courses. They [...]

After years of sparring with the townsfolk and veiling itself in secrecy, the Church of Scientology has succeeded in turning Clearwater into its spiritual mecca. Scientologists quietly run teen nightclubs, schools, day-care centers, management consulting firms and other businesses, records and interviews show. Now the strategy of the organization, longtime observers say, is to confront controversy, gain converts and make money - lots of it. Scientology's Clearwater operation brings in $1.5-million to $2-million a week, say church watchers who include Clearwater ...

CLEARWATER — In Pinellas County — with its 7 percent unemployment rate the signs on the four Church of Scientology buildings draw attention. Two say simply, "Now Hiring." Others promise a job with "low pay — great future." One along busy U.S. 19 touts jobs for "kitchen personnel." Two others boast: "We are recruiting." What the signs don't say is that the Church of Scientology isn't looking for employees. It is trying to recruit members. The signs also don't say that ...