Bruno Retailleau “supports” an association which prohibits the veil for employees

The modification of the internal regulations of a social association in Nancy to establish a neutrality clause poses the risk of dismissal on two employees wearing the veil, warns a union, when the Minister of the Interior announces his “support” to the association.

The council of the Association Accueil et Réinsertion Sociale (AARS) of Nancy, “state operator”modified its internal regulations on August 10, which were obsolete, a SUD union delegate explained to AFP. On this occasion, a neutrality clause (religious, political and philosophical) was established, explains the union in a press release.

On September 19, “two employees of the Muslim association” who wore the veil were the subject of an interview with the president of the association “for an explanation of the text”continues SUD. “Three solutions were offered to them”: the removal of their veil, a conventional termination or dismissal, lists the union. The employees concerned were to give a response to management on Thursday, but currently on sick leave, they have not yet done so, according to a union source denouncing the “brutality of the situation”.

“I will fight tirelessly to roll back separatism”

“It is not acceptable for people to seek to escape from common rules regarding secularismindicated on X Friday the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau. I support this association, a state operator, which only applies the law. As Minister of the Interior, I will fight tirelessly to roll back separatism.”

When contacted by AFP, the AARS management did not respond. “How to accept a limitation of individual freedoms, political opinions, philosophical thoughts in a sector perpetually animated and crossed by social, societal, political, religious and philosophical questions”asked SUD.

According to the union, management argues that the association’s employees carry out a public service mission and must therefore follow the same rules as civil servants, subject, as required by law, to the duty of neutrality. The association employs 300 people, mainly around Nancy and in the south of Meurthe-et-Moselle.

Its actions are distributed around social emergencies, accommodation, medico-social and support towards employment and housing, according to a job offer published on the France Travail website. A rally is planned at the union’s call on Wednesday in Nancy, during the next AARS board of directors, “to ask governance to withdraw the neutrality clause”.