LOT airline forbidden its flight attendants to wear crosses

Polish Airlines, better known as LOT, has officially banned its employees to wear the symbol of the Roman Catholic Church - Catholic crucifix.

The new ban will come into force on the first day of March of this year and will concern flight attendants serving flights. According to information published on the website of the Polish airline, the staff will not be allowed to wear jewelry depicting religious symbols.

Poland is one of the very religious countries in Europe and new ban on wearing crosses caused a major stir. Representatives of the Polish Conservative Party have already called such action of LOT Airlines discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Members of the parliament had signed an appeal to the management of the Polish Airlines, which indicates that such a ban is a discriminatory action against the Catholics in Poland, as well as threat of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Article 31 of the Polish Constitution.

Speaker of the LOT Airline Leszek Chorzewski said that introducing of the ban was caused by necessity to avoid unexpected reactions of passengers belonging to a variety of religious confessions, which annually use the airline flights. The speaker said the ban will concern absolutely all religious symbols.

However, the parliament representatives were not satisfied with such explanation from LOT and stated that the ban is a barefaced attack on religion in the name of political correctness.

It should be noted that similar situation was observed in the UK in 2006, when the BA airline was forced to cancel the ban imposed earlier on wearing religious symbols by the employees at work.