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The State of New Jersey’s exempting of Atlantic City’s casinos from the state’s 2006 Smoke-Free Air Act exposing workers to life-threatening second hand smoke because that’s what the gaming industry requires is on its face a corrupt arrangement that should shock the conscience of all of us.
As documented in the lawsuit filed last week by Nancy Erika Smith on behalf of the United Auto Workers and a grass roots group of union and non-union casino workers, the State of New Jersey “knowingly” forced “employees to work in toxic conditions” that resulted in “life-threatening illness and death.”
Over the years this smoking syndicate has come to enlist the state’s top political leadership, the casino industry, and the largest casino workers union in Atlantic City, which takes the position that the profits of their employers have to be paramount when considering the smoking issue.
You really can’t get a true feel for the moral bankruptcy of this position until you study the timeline of what we collectively knew about the properties of second hand smoke and when we knew it.
Consider that it was in 1964 that the U.S. Surgeon General established that smoking caused cancer and in 1993 the U.S. EPA found that second hand smoke was a Class A carcinogen. In the decades that followed, there were dozens of follow up scientific studies all saying the same thing. By 2006, the U.S. Surgeon General concluded there was no safe level of second hand smoke.
“Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) from burning tobacco products causes disease and premature death among people who do not smoke,” the CDC asserted. “There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke; even brief exposure can cause immediate harm.”.
As a direct consequence of this unholy alliance, casino workers have died and many more are dealing with life-altering diseases as a consequence of their occupational exposure to cigarette and cigar smoke.
Yet, in the Soprano state, the attitude of the ruling power structure seems to be that nobody is pointing a gun at these casino workers forcing them to work in the toxic air Gov. Phil Murphy the legislature permits inside the casinos. This regulatory accommodation is a product of the consensus that exists between the state’s political power brokers, the casino industry itself, and sadly the state’s largest casino worker union UNITE Here Local 54, which represents over 10,000 workers.
The suit filed in State Superior Court in Mercer County follows years of unsuccessful lobbying of the state legislature to end the exemption by both non-union and union casino workers who just want what every other worker in the state is guaranteed, a smoke free work environment. This battle pits a revitalized UAW, which represents 3,000 Atlantic City casino workers at three casinos, against UNITE Here Local 54, the bigger labor player in the industry here in New Jersey that has gone along with the exemption.
While UNITE Here didn’t respond to an email or a phone call looking for comment on the lawsuit, Local 54 President Donna DeCaprio released the latest data indicating that while sports betting and online gaming were on the upswing, Atlantic City’s nine casinos saw a 1.6 percent decline year over year. Only three of the casinos have seen more in-person gamblers than they did before COVID-19 hit in 2020.
“Alarm bells should be ringing in Atlantic City and in Trenton as to both the short-term and long-term negative economic trends,” DeCaprio said in a statement. “Representatives in the New Jersey Legislature must understand the perilous economic situation at hand for my members, and indeed all workers in Atlantic City.”
According to the NJ Casino Control Commission, the industry employs close to 23,000 workers. Close to half of those workers are not unionized. It was anti-smoking activists from Borgata, a non-union shop, that in the midst of COVID, decided to fight the pro-smoking syndicate that put profits over people.
In just a few years, CEASE — Casino Employees Against Smoking’s Effects. CEASE now has chapters of casino workers in Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
Nicole Vitola is a non-union dealer at Borgata and was one of the original members of CEASE that pressed for three years to try and get the legislature to lift the smoking exemption.
“With COVID, enough was enough — we had been suppressed for so long. I dealt with two pregnancies with smoke in my face — cigar smoke in the face,” said Vitola during an interview. “I was six months pregnant working with high-rollers and they allowed cigar smokers in the same small rooms with these high-rollers, and I still cry today when I think of how I put my kids in that situation because I needed benefits.”
Beverly Quinn, president of UAW Local 8888, is a blackjack dealer at the Tropicana. She told InsiderNJ the COVID pandemic and Gov. Murphy’s temporality prohibiting smoking in the casinos was the turning point for casino workers.
“It brought awareness that people can stop and walk out to the boardwalk and smoke a cigarette and for two years we had no smoking in the casino and it really made us say we don’t have to put up with this,” Quinn said. “We have rights like every other person in New Jersey.”
On April 5th, the day the lawsuit was filed, a large high energy crowd of anti-smoking casino workers and their supporters gathered on the steps of the Mercer County Courthouse.
“Usually when we come up here, we are asking somebody to listen to us; we are begging for somebody to have mercy on us; we are pleading for a little humanity —but not today,” proclaimed Lamont White, a dealer at the Borgata casino since 1985. “Today, we get off our knees and stand up! We offered them the carrot — and now they get the stick!”
Nancy Erika Smith is the employment attorney representing the UAW and CEASE.
“We are taking the fight out of the backroom and into the courtroom,” Smith told the crowd of well over a hundred. “The very first thing in the New Jersey Constitution since 1776 is you all have the right to safety, not everybody but you. The other thing the Constitution says — and it’s very relevant here — the legislature can’t pass special laws that exclude some people and favors corporations. The reason for that is because the legislature is subject to pressure like backroom pacts, dark money, campaign contributions. the tobacco lobby and the casino lobby.”
UAW President Shawn Fain, who delivered remarks remotely, told the crowd the UAW stepped up because it was wrong for casino workers to be left out of the occupational health protections every other New Jersey based worker had under the state’s landmark 2006 Smoke Free Air Act.
“This legislation was supposed to protect everyone from the dangers of secondhand smoke — but somehow our casino workers have been asked to roll the dice, all in the name of corporate greed,” Fain said. “Imagine working day in and day out surrounded by smoke knowing it’s affecting your health. Every worker deserves a safe and healthy workplace. It is a basic human right.”
While Fain’s successful strike last year against the big three carmakers that undid a generation of labor concessions has put him in the national spotlight, it’s important to keep in mind how he rose to power by fighting rampant corruption within his own union which had actually been co opted by one of the big three automakers.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Fiat Chrysler [FCA US LLC], then one of the Big Three automakers, spread $3.5 million around to get the UAW leadership to sell out the membership, from 2009 through 2016. “Instead of negotiating in good faith, FCA corrupted the collective bargaining process and the UAW members’ rights to fair representation,” the DOJ stated in a press release in 2021.
Fain became president, after the first ever direct election of a UAW president since the founding of the union by Walter Reuther in 1935. Historically, the legacy union chose their national leadership through a delegate system. After a dozen top union officials, including two former union presidents were convicted of embezzling, a court-appointed monitor polled the union’s active and retired members who voted to hold a direct rank and file election that Fain went on to win.
“I am running because I am sick of the complacency of our top leaders,” Fain announced during a candidates’ forum, blasting the UAW leadership for viewing “the [auto] companies as our partners rather than our adversaries” and for feathering their own nests with “wage increases, early retirement bonuses, and pensions,” even as the rank and file failed to be made whole after major concessions made during the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), who is running for the U.S. Senate and recently got the UAW’s endorsement in the June primary, was on hand at the Mercer County Courthouse to show support for the anti-smoking drive.
“Action is the only way you can make change,” Kim told the crowd. “You cannot assume change. Change is not just going to happen; it does not happen on its own. You are making it happen. So, action today is so important. But what I ask you is what are you doing tomorrow? What are you doing next week? How do we sustain this action? The only way you can sustain this action is through solidarity.”
The Atlantic City ‘arrangement’ whereby casino workers are forced to inhale second hand smoke so they can earn a living to feed their families, is just one example of immoral arrangements that governments are often complicit like when they hire non-union contractors who exploit immigrant workers.
It’s so widespread it’s a key part of America’s economic framework that concentrates wealth at the top while front line workers take all the risks and get substandard wages for their trouble.
Multiple studies have documented that union construction sites as safer. According to an Illinois Economic Policy Institute and University of Illinois study based on tens of thousands of OSHA inspections, union jobsites were “19 percent less likely to have health and safety violations than non-union sites” and generated 34 percent fewer violations when compared to non-union sites.
The same day that Kim was addressing the rally, President Biden was in Baltimore meeting with the families of the six immigrant workers who were killed working a non-union paving job on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore that came crashing down when a cargo ship hit it bringing it down.
“The damage is devastating and our hearts are still breaking,” Biden said. He described how one of the men had texted his girlfriend that the crew had just poured cement and were waiting for it to dry just before the ship hit the bridge. “We’ll never forget the contributions these men made to this city,” Biden promised, the New York Times reported.
Sadly, just a year earlier another mass casualty event on I-695 in Maryland when another six immigrant workers on a non-union road work crew were killed didn’t garner national attention.
It was just another day in America.
The state’s own Maryland Occupational Safety and Health cited the Maryland DOT’s State Highway Administration for a “serious” violation — failing to post basic but essential traffic control signs approaching the construction zone that would alert passing motorists that highway work crews would be coming in and out of the zone. No monetary fine was imposed.
As for the private contractor, the federal OSHA levied a $3,000 fine which the notice of violation described as “contested.”
Kim told InsiderNJ that all too often immigrant workers find their precarious legal status exploited by contractors.
“We see that not only in terms of worker safety but we see that in terms of worker safety but we see that in terms of pay,” Kim said. “We see that in other issues too. It’s definitely a big concern.”
Kim continued. “We need a rational humane immigration system for a lot of reasons. We need to be a country that needs to remain true to the value of immigration and protects that. We need to be a country that respects a level of human dignity and decency across the board in terms of the protection of people.”
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