Atlantic City Casino Union Issues Support for Smoking Ban

A trades union that represents tabular array spunky dealers within Atlantic Ocean City casinos is supportive of efforts to personnel the ix gaming floors to go smoke-free through state legislation.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) represents dealers at ternion casinos inwards town, Caesars, Bally’s, and Tropicana. type A condition of those workers’ ongoing employment is being subjected to grievous used smoke.

Shawn Fain, the international prexy of the union, which is the 12th-largest moil organisation inward the United States, this week lent his championship to body politic efforts to end the Atlantic Ocean City cassino smoking loophole.

Thousands of UAW members … are exposed on a daily cornerstone to the toxic harms of secondhand smoking,” Fain wrote inwards submitted testimony to land lawmakers. “Patrons blow cigarette/tobacco smoking straight into their faces for octad hours, and due to the nature of their work, tabular array dealers are unable to take their eyes out from the table, so they accept through the thickly smoke that surrounds their workplace.”

Currently, smoking on Atlantic Ocean City floors is allowed in designated areas. Each casino is special to allowing tobacco plant smoking on 25% of their gaming base space.

Divisive Issue

Legislation to ending the gambling casino smoking allowance created through the New Jersey Smokefree Air Act passed inward 2006 has been lingering in the State House since 2021. The electric current legislation, Senate Bill 264 and Assembly Bill 2151, was introduced in Jan 2022.

The superposable statutes already have got enough bipartisan financial backing past way of life of co-sponsors to go out of their respective chambers. Despite the widespread backing, the Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee failed to forward SB264 when it considered the bar on Nov 30.

State Sen. Chief Joseph Vitale (D-Northern Middlesex), who introduced the Senate’s gambling casino smoking billhook and chairs the chamber’s wellness committee, said he was ace vote shy of having the unsubdivided absolute majority required to rise the statute. Committee Republicans said they want more time to librate input submitted from the casinos, which argue a smoking banning would step-down gaming and final result in an estimated 2,500 job cuts.

The casinos have got the living of Unite Here Local 54, the travail trades union that represents nearly 10K holiday resort workers in Atlantic Ocean City. Unite Here doesn’t stand for gaming workers as the UAW does, but instead supports waitstaff, bartenders, cooks, porters, and housekeepers.

Local 54 President Donna DeCaprio said inwards July that a casino smoking prohibition “would follow a suicide pact.”

Grassroots Movement

Many cassino workers, including those represented by UAW, say their careers are risking their health. The thrust to get rid of casino smoking has been led by a grassroots coalition called Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects, or CEASE.

We feature been the only when workers inwards our province forced to opt betwixt our wellness and a paycheck. It’s been nearly ii decades,” register a statement provided to Casino.org by CEASE.

Fain agrees.

“Workers should result act inward the same precondition they arrived,” the UAW boss declared. “Union. Non-union. Factory, office, casino, or any work inwards between, worker refuge must be the keep down I goal of every employer and worker throughout the state.”