Atlantic City casino smoking opponents rallying exterior a nation senator’s power who they say flip-flopped his financial support invited them indoors amid icy moth-eaten temperatures on Wednesday.
Members of CEASE — Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects — and tabularise gamy dealers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) unification went to New island of Jersey Sen. Vince Polistina’s (R-Atlantic) business office in Egg Harbor Township. The gambling casino smoking opponents voiced their displeasure with Polistina agreeing to commit the casinos clip to develop possible compromises, with ane ahead of time thought being to the full enclosed smoking rooms.
The casinos contend a full tobacco plant ban on their gaming floors would trail to revenue losses and monumental task cuts. They say enclosed smoking spaces disunite from non-smoking gaming areas would solve the controversy, and only workers willing to process inwards such smoking environments would business deal cards and pay heed to slots in the enclosures.
CEASE says that’s a cluster of garbage.
“You want to establish smoking rooms to follow staffed by volunteers. We are sledding to be ‘voluntold’ to tour in,” said Pete Naccarelli, a 27-year tabularize gritty dealer at the Borgata who heads the Atlantic Ocean City CEASE chapter. Naccarelli’s comments privileged the res publica senator’s office staff were first off reported by the Press of Atlantic Ocean City.
CEASE members told the province senator that casinos hold position a pregnant adult female and a coworker battling cancer at smoking tables.
Senator Defends Position
Polistina ab initio supported province lawmaking to force the 9 casinos inward Atlantic Ocean City to require smokers to go game out of doors to illumination up. He attended CEASE rallies inward the yesteryear and was seemingly ane of the grassroots coalition’s strongest allies.
I was with you from the start, stood with you at the rallies, stood with you inward Trenton,” Polistina said. “I concord with the fact that we should non get smoking inward any indoor facility anywhere inward the province of New Jersey.”
Polistina blamed politics for his alteration of heart. He said the South island of Jersey Democratic delegation lost seats during the recent election and the odds of implementing a total smoking forbiddance lengthened.
Polistina says he would allay voter turnout inward favour of a gambling casino smoking forbidding should it come upwardly for a voter turnout on the Senate floor. But inwards December, he said he supported allowing the casinos to evolve solutions that mightiness sidestep a good smoking ban.
“The casinos believe they can buoy forgather our end of eliminating employee and patron exposure to secondhand fume with a structured programme and additional capital investiture into their properties o'er the next pair of years,” Polistina said last-place month. “Given that their concerns around potency chore losses and closures make resonated with some lawmakers, this is the way I trust we need to depart so that we don’t lose momentum on this issue.”
Union Also to Blame, Says Senator
While the UAW supports a smoking ban, as their cassino members are frontline workers who sell cards, Unite Here Local 54 does not.
Local 54 represents many more cassino workers inward Atlantic City than UAW, but their members act in the first place inwards resort hotel operations. Such jobs include waitstaff, bartenders, cooks, porters, and housekeepers.
Local 54 has sided with the casinos inwards the mentation that a smoking forbiddance would relocate smokers to casinos inwards Philadelphia where land jurisprudence permits smoking on upwardly to half of the gaming floors. Harrah’s, Live!, and Rivers continue to appropriate cassino smoking, spell Parx Casino is smoke-free. Parx was the top-grossing cassino inwards Pennsylvania’s 17-casino marketplace inward 2023.
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