She is 4½ months pregnant, and after losing three other pregnancies, this should be a blessed, magical time in her life.
Instead, she is terrified, with good reason: Strangers blow smoke in her face eight hours a day as she deals cards at Bally’s Casino, her employer told her they’d rather have her take an unpaid leave than protect her, and the New Jersey State Legislature is cowered by the power and greed of an industry that doesn’t care about the toxic filth that workers have to inhale each day.
“I believe in personal rights – if you want to smoke outside, fine,” said the woman, a 31-year-old Atlantic County resident. “But every time someone lights up around me, I almost feel like it’s a personal attack.” She dropped in a poignant three-second pause. “I feel like my rights and my health are violated,” she added.
Take a bow, Trenton lawmakers. This woman cannot afford to walk away from a job, unlike the special people who breathe clean air at the Statehouse, and their callous indifference puts her and her unborn child in danger every second she’s on the clock. Take a bow, for allowing repulsive corporate behavior to jeopardize the health of a vulnerable mother-to-be, her baby, and every other casino floor worker in Atlantic City.
And take the deepest bow, Nick Scutari. It is the Senate President who has refused to post a bill with 17 sponsors that would ban casino smoking.
Scutari apparently has yet to grasp that 40,000 Americans die from second-hand smoke every year, or maybe he doesn’t believe that casino workers deserve the same protections that the rest of us have. Indeed, there is plenty of blame to spread around here – the casino originally agreed to assign the woman a no-smoking table, then rescinded this accommodation without an explanation, according to the woman’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith.
But make no mistake: This is all about a wretched malfunction of Legislature leadership, as it has continuously failed to update the Smoke Free Air Act, which has protected workers from second-hand smoke for 23 years. Workers other than casino employees, that is.
“It is barbaric and indisputably immoral that casino owners place their staff in obvious life-altering danger -- clearly, shame does not motivate them,” said Senate Health Committee chairman Joe Vitale, who has been pushing for a casino smoking ban since 2007. “But only an act by our Legislature and the governor can help save this young mom, her baby, and all other casino workers.”
Vitale contacted the governor’s office Tuesday, just to ask Gov. Murphy to suspend smoking in casinos until the Legislature passes a bill -- just as the governor did during COVID. Murphy, after all, has repeatedly affirmed that he would approve of such a ban, if lawmakers just sent him a bill.
But the top lawmaker is unmoved. Scutari has flopped on this issue numerous times, recently deciding that he’ll allow South Jersey lawmakers to work on a compromise: “I haven’t ruled it out completely,” he told Politico last month.
That means he also hasn’t ruled out making his chamber an accessory to an assault on the unborn, despite the fact that a bill which imposes a full ban has already passed Vitale’s committee.
Meanwhile the woman who has had three miscarriages shows up at work every day because she and her husband have rent and bills like everybody else. Bally’s, which did not respond to requests for comment, told the woman it will not grant her this accommodation because workers with asthma, etc., might request the same. Its HR rep, according to Smith, said such an act would place “undue hardship” on Bally’s.
The casino industry is always funny when it throws around phrases like “undue hardship,” given its cartoonish avarice. Atlantic City’s casinos set another earnings record ($208 million) for online gambling in September. Bally’s monthly take ($24.1 million) represents a whopping 19.2% spike since last September. Such hardship.
But give Bally’s credit: It is offering pink cocktails and illuminating its entrance with pink lights during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Let that be a lesson to those who question their commitment to women’s health.
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