Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, charging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment. Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level Scientologist (OT VIII) and member of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE), which means that he follows Hubbard "management technology" in how he runs his businesses and donates a portion of revenues to the Church of Scientology.
UPDATE (December 25, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more.
So which party are you supporting, the right of the business to fire someone who refuses mandatory training or the employee who demands his right to work at a company, but not follow its rules? I'm no fan of Scientology, but if a company wants to dictate silly rules that lower productivity through employee attrition and lower quality product and services then that's their right. The market will punish them.
ReplyDeleteI was just looking for a blog that might help me with a boot time defrag problem on DK 2008.
ReplyDeleteI'm on my 4th version of Diskeeper, and have recommended the product to many of my friends and family.
It is a great product, however since my money is going to support a Cult, I will be switching to another product.
If Christian Indoctrination was a job requirement for any corporation, the news media would be having a field day. I think it is doubtful that any court will affirm a company's right to discriminate on the basis of religion.
So Long DK, I need to pass this info along to others.
Misanthrope: Read the linked article. Scientology is deemed (including by themselves) a religion, and you can't make religious indoctrination a condition of employment.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware that in today's regulatory climate they cannot get away with this kind of required training. The point of my original comment was that they should be able to do this and be punished by the free market instead of the EEOC.
ReplyDeleteMisanthrope: Diskeeper is obliged to follow the law. As far as what the law says, and in terms of both morality and reason I think that Diskeeper is in the wrong. I suspect that Diskeeper will try to argue that the Hubbard management technology is not religious, and if they can make that case, they may win a dismissal. The strongest piece of evidence against that in the complaint is the conversation between Staffer and Godelman reported on p. 8 of the complaint. I'm curious to hear more details about what specifically was mandatory at Diskeeper.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether, *all else being equal*, we would be better off today if all regulations regarding employment discrimination were removed, I'm inclined to doubt it, though I do find it plausible that there are possible sets of conditions and institutional frameworks where we would indeed be better off without such regulations. I suspect that without them today, there would be a lot more discrimination against members of minority religions and nonbelievers, and a lot more imposition of various forms of Christianity upon the workplace.
In my ideal society, there would be no special privileges granted to religion per se; rather, employers would not care about what you believe or what you do outside of the workplace except to the extent that it genuinely interfered with your ability to do the job you were hired to do.
Organized crime. Scientology is nothing but organized crime, and this criminal enterprise is trying to force Scientology criminality down the throats of its employees. God damned fucking crooks!!!
ReplyDeleteSince the Scientology crime syndicate wants to play pretend that it's some how a religion, the violently insane criminals get to be sued for violating people's Constitutional rights. If the insane criminals would not have tried to claim they're some how a religion, they wouldn't be getting sued for their freakishly bizarre antics directed against their employees.
I hope the company is sued to death and that the crime bosses at DiskKeeper go to prison and get beaten bloody every day for their crimes against society.
Nobody can trust a Scientology crook. Whether these people infiltrate malicious software in to their products or not is utterly irrelevant. We don't need crimial enterprises sneaking their products in to our computers and these insane criminals are too fucking close to being allowed to do so if they are not already doing so.
We have enough of that with Republican government traitors, we don't need the Scientology crime syndicate adding their criminal actions to the mix.
My opinions only and only my opinions.
"Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of." - Thomas Sowell
ReplyDeleteIt's their private property and business to be run how they deem fit. You can choose to work there. You can choose to buy their products. Or not. Obviously this doesn't include or condone fraud and coercion. And this isn't referring to today's economy. I'm speaking about my laissez faire utopia. Per Mr. Sowell's quote, I think its important to defend the freedoms of those individuals and groups that we disagree with otherwise who will defend our freedoms.