Calling smoking in New Jersey casinos a “a moral, health, and safety issue,” a United Auto Workers leader, representing casino gaming-floor workers in Atlantic City, said today the union will step up efforts to ban it as part of multiprong quest for smoke-free air.
He said the union is pulling out of the New Jersey AFL-CIO and will pressure state lawmakers to remove the provision that exempts casino floors from the state’s clean-indoor-air law.
The UAW and the New Jersey chapter of Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects (CEASE) will also appeal last week’s dismissal of their Superior Court lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the exemption, which allows smoking on 25 percent of the casino floor. Attorney Nancy Erika Smith, who represents casino workers, has said she will ask the state Supreme Court to expedite the case. The UAW represents employees at Bally’s, Caesars, and the Tropicana in Atlantic City, while CEASE has members in every New Jersey casino.
“For some reason, (with) our peoples’ lives, it’s okay if they’re expendable,” said Dan Vicente, director of UAW Region 9, which covers New Jersey plus much of New York and Pennsylvania. “That’s, frankly, not something we’re willing to accept. So if we gotta dust it up, we gotta dust it up.”
Pete Nacarelli, a CEASE co-founder and dealer for 28 years, said the group will launch a digital ad campaign highlighting the impact on employees’ families from living with someone whose job requires daily exposure to dangerous secondhand smoke. He and Vicente spoke today at an online news conference, along with state Sen. Joe Vitale, sponsor of a bill to remove the exemption; Cynthia Hallett, director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights; and Nicole Vitola, another CEASE co-founder and dealer.
Nacarelli, whose mother has worked in casinos for 35 years, said the ad campaign is designed to show “we’re not just numbers,” but “real people with real families.” Hallett said the “Kids of CEASE” ads will appear on YouTube and other channels and be limited to New Jersey at the outset. Ads will focus on districts of key legislators, including Democrat Assemblyman Bill Moen, chief sponsor of a January 2024 bill to lift the exemption. That bill remains in committee.
Vitale, also a Democrat, said he will push for a Senate vote on his bill, which was passed out of committee in January. He said some members “bailed out at the last minute” before a vote earlier this year, citing concerns about the casino industry’s claims of sizable revenue losses. He called proposed compromises on indoor smoking areas “absurd” and pointed to similar disproven arguments before smoking in restaurants was banned years ago.
“Can you imagine reintroducing smoking in a restaurant today? It would be ridiculous,” he said. “People by the millions would object.”
Vicente acknowledged that the UAW’s separation from the New Jersey AFL-CIO would have little day-to-day effect on union members. “The goal of this is to send a message to the other trade-union leaders,” he said. “Health and safety is one of the founding principles of unionism. If you stand against that, you stand against exactly what we’re supposed to be.”
He blasted leaders of Local 54 of Unite Here, which represents housekeepers, bartenders, food servers, cooks, bellmen, doormen, and other service workers in the casino and hospitality industry. Local 54 told the Superior Court that lifting the smoking ban could cause thousands of casino layoffs.
“We’re going to start a campaign to try to educate, particularly Local 54 membership, that their president stands actively against health-and-safety measures,” Vicente said. “You should be able to go to work and go home in the same manner. That’s a fundamental principle.”
Drawing on ANR’s 50 years of experience, which includes lobbying for smoking bans on commercial flights, Hallett said New Jersey is an example of the casino industry trying to “wear down” advocates of smoke-free air. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said, noting that 21 states and two localities already include commercial casinos in their statewide smoke-free workplace laws, in addition to 150 tribal operations and several commercial casinos that voluntarily operate smoke free.
“While logic should win the day, it won’t,” because of the casino industry’s money and pressure, she said. “We’re going to be telling these stories from real people. We’ve got the evidence and we’re just going to be persistent.”
Vitola told of her two “grueling” pregnancies from working in a smoking environment and said fellow dealers have similar troubles. “We have a lot of elderly dealers who have respiratory problems, heart conditions. We’re an aging workforce. There’s a young workforce that doesn’t want to come into this industry.”
Still, she has faith that casinos will join the workplaces that ban smoking. “People are going to do the right thing,” she said. “I’m not going to stop fighting, because it’s literally a life-or-death situation for us.”
