Casino Workers Are Fighting for the Air They Breathe

https://inthesetimes.com/article/new-jersey-casino-workers-smoke-free

“Why are our lives less important than every other employee in the state of New Jersey?”

Kim Kelly May 15, 2024

Rome burned to the ground almost 2,000 years ago, but Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City, N.J.,is still smoking. The sprawling casino, hotel and entertainment complex is a holdover from the city’s mid-century glory days, where a visitor can still slurp down a shrimp cocktail and gamble to their heart’s content — and in some parts of the casino, light up a cigarette or a stogie and chain smoke the night away.

When New Jersey passed its Smoke-Free Air Act in 2006, casinos were a notable exemption. Now, Atlantic City’s casino workers, with help from the United Auto Workers, are fighting to close the loophole and clean up the air in their workplaces.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ​“there is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure,” and even brief exposure can cause immediate harm to the respiratory and inflammatory systems. Beverly Quinn can vouch for that. She’s spent the past 42 years working at the Tropicana as a dealer and has seen just about everything during her time there. Bev — never Beverly — is in turn brassy and warm, a devoted 66-year-old grandmother who cares deeply for her coworkers and won’t say no to a glass of sauvignon blanc. She also serves as the president of UAW Local 8888, which represents 3,000 casino workers at Bally’s, Caesars and the Tropicana — and she is tired of chronic sinus problems that she attributes to working in a cloud of smoke.

“Back in December we buried a dealer, 54 years old, he never smoked in a day in his life. He passed away from lung cancer."

Worker-led efforts to ban smoking in Atlantic City’s casinos have long struggled to gain ground against the casinos, whose executives insist that banning smoking will kill jobs, send patrons fleeing to other casinos where smoking is allowed and hurt the already fragile local gaming industry. Ever since the high rollers decamped to other gambling-friendly locales back in the 1970s, Atlantic City’s been down on its luck, a relic trapped in amber and knockoff Art Deco carpeting.

FULL story at link above.