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MONTREAL - No public servant - including Muslim teachers and judges - should be allowed to wear anything at work that shows what religion they belong to, leaders of Quebec's two biggest trade union federations and a civil-servants' union told the Bouchard-Taylor commission Monday.
"We think that teachers shouldn't wear any religious symbols - same thing for a judge in court, or a minister in the National Assembly, or a policeman - certainly not," said Rene Roy, secretary-general of the 500,000-member Quebec Federation of Labour
"The wearing of any religious symbol should be forbidden in the workplace of the civil service . . . in order to ensure the secular character of the state," said Lucie Grandmont, vice-president of the 40,000-member Quebec union of public employees.
Dress codes that ban religious expression should be part of a new "charter of secularism" - akin to the Charter of the French Language - that the Quebec government should adopt, said Claudette Carbonneau, president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions.