For all ex-Sea Org and Scientology staff: Make your claim to Social Security.

If you have ever been a Sea Org staff member, or a Class V Org staff member, you need to have and act on this information.

The Church is legally obligated as an employer to pay into your social security account for the time you were on staff. As is typical of them, it has not lived up to its obligation, and many ex-staff are finding out that they had no payments or staggered payments during their time in the Sea Org.

If you signed a VOW OF POVERTY the Church is still liable to pay for all the time you put in BEFORE YOU SIGNED THAT VOW.

Here is what you must do to sort it out:

1. If you do not get an annual accounting newsletter from Social Security describing your benefits, you must first handle this.

2. Go IN PERSON to your LOCAL SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICE and get a LIVE body in front of you. DO NOT try to handle this via internet or email or telephone. You will get NO RESULTS.

3. Get a statement mailed to you by making certain they have a mailing address for you, and your social security number. Then you will have it in writing what your account is.

4. If for the years you were in, and were not under a VOW OF POVERTY, the Church DID NOT pay into your social security, take YOUR STATEMENT into a LOCAL office with a LIVE person in front of you and point out the theft to a representative and ask them to handle this for you. They are obligated to conduct an investigation, and it is considered a federal offense to withhold these payments.

5. Do NOT be dismayed by the fact that the Church will be contacted and asked to put this in order. HUNDREDS of people have asked the Church to live up to this obligation.

6. This is a legal obligation every religious organization has when employing people in any capacity who do not sign a vow of poverty.

7. Do it NOW while the heat is on. There is a big PR flap about to explode about the Church not handling these legal rudiments.

8. If you have staggered payments, it is easy to resolve as this is evidence the Church KNEW about these obligations and put them in some pending basket while the elderly suffered.

9. If you have NO staggered payments it still doesn't matter. The Church is only owning up financially as pressured, not from duty motivation. They are operating on a "dead men tell no tales" operating basis without knowing about DEPENDENTS and RELATIVES having claims against the account! If a Sea Org
member died, the husband or wife of that person can still make a claim against the account.

10. There are many abuses by people such as Hari Krishna and many others with the accounting, but since the Church is so grounded in legal docs for establishment they have no way of escaping these responsibilities.

11. Even if you are in a different country now and you are owed Social Security benefits from your time working in the U.S., this applies to you too.

Go to your local office and make a report if you have not been paid into Social Security for the years you put in. It doesn't matter if it never occurred to you
before or you hadn't thought of it. It was a legal obligation of the Church.