Working in U.S. casinos means being exposed to second-hand smoke, putting many employees at risk.
Having fought unsuccessfully for over three years to push for a smoking ban in Atlantic City casinos, Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects (CEASE) and the United Auto Workers have taken legal action. They filed a lawsuit on Friday in state Superior Court, challenging a loophole in New Jersey's indoor clean air law. Although New Jersey implemented a smoking ban in enclosed indoor spaces and workplaces in 2006, casino workers were excluded from this protection, allowing smoking on 25% of the casino floor.
"The intention of this law was to safeguard everyone from the hazards of secondhand smoke. However, our casino employees are being put at risk in the pursuit of corporate profits," stated UAW President Shawn Fain during a speech. "Every worker is entitled to a safe work environment, and every individual should receive equal legal protection. By neglecting casino workers, the state of New Jersey is failing to fulfill its obligations."
UAW's region 9 represents workers in New Jersey, including more than 3,000 in the Bally's, Caesars and Tropicana casinos in Atlantic City, "many of whom have suffered, and continue to suffer severe health problems as a result of having to work in secondhand smoke," according to the complaint. Casino workers "have cancer and other diseases related to smoking, although they don't smoke," the document stated.
"You know you're in a place unlike any other place in 2024, immediately. Nobody has to be smoking near you, you get the effect as soon as you walk into the casino," Lamont White, 61, a dealer in Atlantic City for nearly 39 years, told CBS MoneyWatch. "My eyes are always red, I have upper respiratory infections all the time — nothing serious yet, but we never know," said White, who works at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, one of nine casinos in Atlantic City. All allow smoking.
"We stand at the tables where they can smoke directly in our faces," relayed Nicole Vitola, 49, also a dealer at the Borgata, and, like White, a co-founder of CEASE, a grassroots group formed in 2021 in New Jersey.
A dealer in Atlantic City for 27 years, Vitola worked in the smoked-filled casino rooms through two pregnancies. "At no time do they show courtesy for the pregnant dealers," she said.
The lawsuit names Gov. Phil Murphy and the state's acting health commissioner. Murphy, a Democrat, has signaled that he would sign a smoking ban into law if state lawmakers pass one. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Casino Association of New Jersey, a trade group that represents all nine Atlantic City casinos, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But the group has opposed a smoking ban, arguing such a prohibition would place the city's casinos at a disadvantage in competing with establishments in neighboring states that allow smoking.
"The state of New Jersey has failed casino workers in Atlantic City for 18 years. We let a false argument about economics subjugate our duty to protect the people we serve and in doing so, we allowed corporations to poison their employees for nearly two decades," Joseph Vitale, a New Jersey state senator, said in a statement supporting the lawsuit.
By 2022, 26 states had commercial casinos employing more than 745,000 people, 22,796 of them in New Jersey, according to the latest annual report from the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.
Casino workers are also leading campaigns to close smoking loopholes in other states, including Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.
Dealers, bartenders and technicians who service the slot machines at U.S. casinos are subjected to on-the-job fumes from the cigarettes of customers still legally allowed to light up inside gambling establishments in 20 states, according to CEASE.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no safe level of secondhand smoke. Further, allowing smoking in casinos puts 96,000 casino workers in Las Vegas at risk, the agency found in a report issued in last year.
Recent data released in June 2022 by Las Vegas-based C3 Gaming revealed that casinos without indoor smoking are outperforming their smoking counterparts.
"While nearly every business in Nevada prioritizes the protection of workers and guests from the well-known dangers of secondhand smoke indoors, casinos remain the exception," stated Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights (ANR) in their call for an end to indoor smoking in the state.
In 2020, MGM made an announcement that Park MGM, along with NoMad Las Vegas, would be transformed into the first fully smoke-free casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Some other casinos have also implemented non-smoking sections.
