  Motivated by the necessity of discrete Z_N symmetries in the MSSM to insure
baryon stability, we study the origin of discrete gauge symmetries from open
string sector U(1)'s in orientifolds based on rational conformal field theory.
By means of an explicit construction, we find an integral basis for the
couplings of axions and U(1) factors for all simple current MIPFs and
orientifolds of all 168 Gepner models, a total of 32990 distinct cases. We
discuss how the presence of discrete symmetries surviving as a subgroup of
broken U(1)'s can be derived using this basis. We apply this procedure to
models with MSSM chiral spectrum, concretely to all known U(3)xU(2)xU(1)xU(1)
and U(3)xSp(2)xU(1)xU(1) configurations with chiral bi-fundamentals, but no
chiral tensors, as well as some SU(5) GUT models. We find examples of models
with Z_2 (R-parity) and Z_3 symmetries that forbid certain B and/or L violating
MSSM couplings. Their presence is however relatively rare, at the level of a
few percent of all cases.
