{"id":7013,"date":"2011-09-08T17:00:27","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T21:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=7013"},"modified":"2011-09-08T10:50:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T14:50:32","slug":"australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","title":{"rendered":"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian government may force the Church of Scientology there to pay millions in past salaries to former members who say they were forced to work for free.<\/p>\n<p>The move came after Australian labor officials received confidential statements from several former Scientology workers who claim they were underpaid, or not paid, for at least a decade. Some alleged victims told the Fair Work Ombudsman that they were paid only $2 a week and had to rely on welfare, according to the <em>Sunday Herald Sun<\/em> newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>The Ombudsman&#8217;s office\u00a0will soon release its findings after an 18-month probe. In a statement it said: &#8220;The Fair Work Ombudsman recently provided a draft copy of its initial finding to the relevant parties for feedback and is currently considering those responses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Insiders said the church had failed to pay staff for such a long time that any order for backpay could bankrupt the organization&#8217;s Australian arm.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldsun.com.au\/news\/more-news\/church-of-scientology-faces-backpay-bill-to-former-members\/story-fn7x8me2-1226123609542\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian government may force the Church of Scientology there to pay millions in past salaries to former members who say they were forced to work for free. The move came after Australian labor officials received confidential statements from several former Scientology workers who claim they were underpaid, or not paid, for at least a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1360],"tags":[1072,1367,2201,2273],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-scientology","tag-australia","tag-bankruptcy","tag-news","tag-scientology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Australian government may force the Church of Scientology there to pay millions in past salaries to former members who say they were forced to work for free. The move came after Australian labor officials received confidential statements from several former Scientology workers who claim they were underpaid, or not paid, for at least a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-08T21:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-09-08T14:50:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy","og_description":"The Australian government may force the Church of Scientology there to pay millions in past salaries to former members who say they were forced to work for free. The move came after Australian labor officials received confidential statements from several former Scientology workers who claim they were underpaid, or not paid, for at least a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-09-08T21:00:27+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-09-08T14:50:32+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy","name":"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-09-08T21:00:27+00:00","dateModified":"2011-09-08T14:50:32+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/09\/australia-may-force-scientologists-church-into-bankruptcy#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Australia may force Scientologists church into bankruptcy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7016,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions\/7016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}