They just aligned themselves with "The World" in taking care of their employee's retirement.

These are the people who would have used a nice pension to probably work for free after retirement or at least go on missions.

They built a large and spacious building in one decade and in the next cut the pension back dating the change 5 years.

I've heard that they don't pay market values because so many cult members want to work for them?

And tithing is a requirement I believe. So you get an automatic donation to your employer, you have to pass a regular worthiness declaration process, and you now don't get a pension when the people where the buck stops are so far into retirement ages that they are looking forward to "eternity only" retirements.

Seriously, a company run by 80 somethings is dropping a pension for its employees.

Shows to go you that these old men have NOT EMPATHY, none at all, zilch, nada for their employees.

Let's float their retirements and let God take care of them in their old age while we live in million dollar condos and have servants.

I rented farmland from the local stake for 6 years. That was close enough. They never once asked where their 10% was and why I didn't pay it...ever. If they had, and it had been a deal breaker, I'd have walked away.

Ron Burr

I worked for the state of Utah for several years before quitting to return to the private sector. I couldn't stand working with this particular group of people at my state job.

My bishop at that time worked for the church (he still does). He was a director of a particular area in which I had my experience. When I let him know I had quit the state job, he offered me a job on the spot. I was flattered.

We talked about why I was leaving the state job (lack of motivated co-workers, extremely lazy group, just a horrible work environment, low pay, etc)....he got really quiet. I said, "it's no different at the church COB, is it?"

He shook his head. He told me he needed motivated employees like me that would light a fire under their co-workers and get things going. I'd already fought (and lost) that battle....so, I refused.

This is my only look into the COB, but it wasn't a pretty picture as far as a place of employment.

anonforthisposting! Wrote:
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> This is my only look into the COB, but it wasn't a
> pretty picture as far as a place of employment.

I've heard this as well. IT is a place where firing you is like calling you out on your worthiness.

The morg is a bloated corporation. No other mainstream religion in the US has the kind of overhead that morg does for maintaining its corporate image. I imagine none come close to the number of useless employees maintained by the morg. Considering what an insignificant religion the morg is, their overhead structure is ridiculous. But, being ridiculous is one thing at which the morg excels.

My BIL works for "the church." He has sort of a lower-level administrative position. He used to be salaried. A few years ago, they took him off salary, put him on hourly and cut his hours. He has worked for the corporation for 26 years (yes, twenty-six). He now makes $9.50 per hour for all his efforts (this is in Utah). I don't understand how my sister could let him keep up with this nonsense for so long. No pension and 26 years and you make slightly more than a McDonald's cashier? Apparently, it's for the health insurance.... ok. It is just such a mark of pride that he works for the bloodsucking cult to him.

Well it's not just the Cob employees that got pensions axed, Other's in the deseret management umbrella were canned, specifically within ksl. When you live behind zions curtain (aka wasatch front) certain unpleasant details get spread around. The gossip from Momo land is that the church hired a group early last year and then fired them at the end of the year right before Christmas. One nicety is that they gave them wonderful severance packages though. The bretheren sure know how to waste money.

To be honest I don't know how the Mormons in Salt Lake and Bountiful can keep their testimonies when the cob/bretheren are on parade everyday in the Tribune. I'm glad I live three counties north where I don't have to see the shenanigans so much.

I worked for the church for several years during my early career.

It was all part of my "world view" that made working anywhere else pointless. Why would I work someplace else where the only motivation would be to make money? At the church I could be furthering God's plan. I also "knew" they would treat us with love and compassion.

Well, that type of motivation didn't last long. Every year we got a speech from higher-ups about how working for lower-than-average pay was a great sacrifice. We were treated like cattle in our work conditions. I literally shared a tiny cubicle with two other people at one time. Morale was horrible all around. Management positions and church leadership positions almost always correlated, and many of them were grade A a--holes. Negativity was rampant, but there was a consistent chatter about how "the corporate world is so much worse."

The church also controlled you inside and out of work with the whole ecclesiastical endorsement that your bishop needed to sign off on every year. Not feeling too sure about going to church or working all those callings anymore? Too bad if you want to keep your job.

The ONE thing to look forward to? The one benefit that I (and everyone else I spoke with) kept waiting for? A good retirement plan. You know, the pension that they just did away with.

Other things I remember:

Rampant sexism against women. COB and the MTC down in Provo were the worst.

A prevailing attitude that everyone had job security, only to be shocked later when layoffs would occur. There was an attempt at a large merger in the IT department with BYU's counterpart, where all employees on both sides were effectively laid off and told to reapply for half the number of positions. It lead to some sabotaging by employees to keep their jobs (according to some management that I spoke with).

Some management required constant time tracking and micromanagement of their employees throughout every day, and had it logged into a computer system.

Management was always incredibly secretive about everything going on.

Oh! But you did get to wear a full suit or dress to work every single day!

Whoa. I think I'm having some kind of PTSD flashback now. I better quit while I'm ahead.

Sorry, that is quite a story. I am curious about example of sexism.

There were multiple lawsuits going on against the Provo MTC at the time. I remember one was about a young woman who went in for a job interview, and the interviewer said something along the line of her being too pretty to work there (something about distracting the male missionaries) and that she should just go find a nice young man, get married, and make babies. She was suing (go girl!).

I'm cautious to mention specifics regarding the COB, because some of them can be easily traced back to the people involved (and therefore me). That being said, there were some situations involving men flashing women (without repercussions), and many others involving women being talked down to or treated in a demeaning way.

Damn. There is "The Priesthood" at work.

A very close family member of mine worked for "The Church" for many years. He left a job with a big government contractor and moved to Salt Lake - at his expense. This was in the 1960s. Anyway, he was a Director and reported directly to the Presiding Bishop. In his work, he was responsible to get stuff from point A to point B. Stuff could be anything from manuals to mission presidents, chairs to ward houses, all the way up to entire temples to island nations.

He is long retired, but reflects often on the stress of the job, which was mostly hyper-office-politics. Often he was chastised for giving contracts to shippers and companies that were not politically tied to the GAs. He said his goal was to spend donated tithing funds in the most responsible manner possible. Little old ladies like his mom were paying on the Social Security and it was his job to be prudent. The GAs, on the other hand, had no problem spending money like drunken sailors.

My relative was actually disciplined by GBH for not issuing contracts to a trucking company owned by a "Stake President" who was a friend to GBH and BKP. He said this went on all the time and GBH was the biggest a--hole God ever allowed to be born. He retired from there and went on to teach logistics and ethics at a University for many more years. He says the Church was the worst place in the world to work and the most testimony-crushing experience of his life.

tithing as a payroll deduction?

Wow! That is such a perk.

Why the ***Hell*** wouldn't they? I mean, if they were faithful, believing members, why wouldn't they?

Because at least from my childhood every church employee we knew and there were quite a few were poor and often had to get the Deseret food.

My parents were misers so I knew we were poor for that reason but the kids of these church employees had it better than me with the church food.

But if you didn't know how bad they were at paying you might have heard about their good retirement. My friend's dad worked for the church and talked about having that at least after all his kids were raised.

Now they don't even have that. Why now would they want to work for the church?

Things must be different, these days, or in the UK. I know a couple of people who work for TSCC, they're on salaries that are about compatible to the average for the industry.

I would think that if you are uber TBM and like to follow rules and/or have perhaps worked for the government before and prefer that over the private sector then I would think those sorts of people would like to work for them.

A coworker of mine left our company to work for the church, was gone about a year - 18 months, then came back to us again. He didn't care for it. Praying about how to program is never a wise choice, but that's how they settled things there.

The church is struggling to find good people in IT in Utah because so many other businesses are driving up wages. All of my coworkers -- including several of my atheist, drinking, but not-quite-yet-resigned ones -- have been approached by LDS headhunters, who generally offer salaries roughly 2/3 of comparable.

He did that. Left a company for about that time, I think, to be a web developer on lds.org.

If so, maybe I should

1) hurry up my chat with my wife so the rest of the family can learn of my dissaffection and/or
2) be a little more circumspect with my personal details!


WRT #2: Naw! Let come what may!

Alpiner Wrote:
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> Praying about how to program is never a wise
> choice, but that's how they settled things there.

Wow, they thought that pryaing to God almighty would yield better programming with C++, python, perl script, Java coding etc.... What baffoons!
>
> The church is struggling to find good people in IT
> in Utah because so many other businesses are
> driving up wages.... offer salaries roughly 2/3 of comparable.

Unless the salary is better or you really hate your environment I'm not sure why an IT person would jump ship. Are their datacenters and IT security program top notch? Afterall, you have to keep those financial records as secret as possible and only the most loyal IT system engineer IV is going to keep his mouth shut regarding the financial systems and what Gold is in there.

Now with the pension being gone I imagine that the 401k offering and matching is very disappointing.

John Dehlin's brother, Joel, was the church's CIO for a long time. I'm told he was a generally competent (we've worked for the same people at varying points) individual.

But... the church has been liquidating a lot of its IT products. PAF is gone. Familysearch.org is still being worked on, but it's supplemented in no small part by Ancestry and other businesses that the church has symbiotic relationships with. The MRS is still dated and in dire need of an update. Church IT had a big layoff at the beginning of the year.

I always allow a chuckle when people talk about the church collecting intel on its members or being in league with the NSA or CIA. Church IT can barely manage a record keeping system and helpdesk, let alone quality programming.

Elder Berry Wrote:
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>
> And tithing is a requirement I believe. So you get
> an automatic donation to your employer, you have
> to pass a regular worthiness declaration process,
>

TSCC does not force an automatic tithing deduction as if it was some payroll line item on your paystuf.

However, You must have a current temple recommend. So, you do need to be a full tithe payer but that can be defined the way you want it to be. The church will call the bishop on ocasion to check up on your temple recommend status and tithing status. I do not know if they also check the amount and cross reference that amount with your salary. It would be easy to do for the church accountants but I can't be sure.

So, if you make $110,000 as a high dollar IT Geek working for the church and you tithe $2,000 and claim being a Full tithe payer.. you are good to go. I don't think the cross reference happens but your mileage may vary.

>So, if you make $110,000 as a high dollar IT Geek working for the church...

LOL... ROFL... I can't stop laughing at that statement. Sorry. =)

Is it possible that the Chief Information Security Officer OR other security person with SANS certificates could make that amount of money?

Programming wages is pretty standard across the nation. Usually $86K to $120K. That wage figure hasn't fluctuated that much over the last 15 years. Especially if your are good!

There need to be huge numbers of drones working for the Church,
whether they do anything or not.

If there weren't thousands of employees and countless departments, there would not be enough higher level management and consulting positions for all the "Nepotism Hires."

There are so many made up, zero responsibility "suit and tie" jobs that basically annybody could fill it's mind boggling.

An Example: Before he was "called" to the First Quorum of the Seventy, Boyd K. Packer's kid, Allan F. Packer, was employed by ChurchCo as a "Missionary Department In field Service Representative." From what I gather it is some type of Intermediary position between Mission Presidents and ChurchCo HQ. I am sorry, but given that Missions are essentially all "overhead" and don't really produce anything, how much stress can that job be? If there's a medical issue, medical people will handle it. Same for legal, insurance, etc. Any issues with the mission and missionaries will be handled by the Mission Presidents 95% of the time. What exactly do these "executives" do? We know what the qualifications are to get the job though don't we?! :-)

I have an ex-mission-companion friend. Shortly after returning from my mission I hung out with him and heard about his father who worked for the church. The stories he told me totally jive with what you wrote. According to him, the church is a bloated organization financing favors.

But it makes sense. It sounded worse than government since there is some oversight in government. In LDS Inc. other than managing the core functions of buildings, manuals, maintaining all the services in the basics of church management and paid coordinators LDS Inc. gets to invent work in their non-profit arms of business.

My friend's father was in one of these arms and it sounded crazy. New computers for this group because their manager's manager's relative has a computer business. This manager drives a super expensive car and no one knows where they got the money for it and on an on...