Q: The superintendent in my pre-war co-op building in Manhattan smokes all day in his basement office. Smoking is not allowed in the public areas of the building and there is constant smoky air in all the lockers just outside his office. Everything we put in our locker stinks of cigarettes. The management company seems to be aware of the issue but has not fixed it. Maybe he’s protected by a union? What can we do?
A: Your super could be powerful. He can command a great staff. He could be the king of his domain. But that doesn’t give him the right to smoke there; This is actually forbidden in two ways.
First, while the manager’s apartment (if he has one) is his turf, his office is considered a common room and is subject to your building’s no-smoking policy in public spaces.
“Even if the supervisor is working from there, residents can and sometimes will have to visit him in the office,” said AJ Rexhepi, managing partner at Century Management Services, which manages more than 100 buildings. “It’s not the manager’s personal area.”
Second, the supervisor’s office is also considered a workplace, and New York State’s Clean Indoor Air Act prohibits smoking in all indoor workplaces, said Leni Morrison Cummins, real estate attorney and chair of condominiums and co-ops at the law firm Cozen O’Connor.
“Other building employees likely go into his office,” Ms Cummins said, “and they are entitled to a smoke-free workplace.”
The first step for the board should be to tell the manager that they are not allowed to smoke in their office and that there will be consequences if they don’t stop. If that doesn’t work, Mr Rexhepi said, the board should notify the building management company.
The manager could send a cease and desist letter to the supervisor, with a copy also going to the supervisor’s union representative and the Realty Advisory Board, a legal organization representing unionized co-ops. If he refuses to sniff his butt, he’ll likely get fired.
Questions about problematic managers are common in Ms. Cummins’ industry. She remembered a supervisor in a new luxury building handing out recreational drugs to residents and taking kickbacks from contractors; he was eventually fired. Another was found asleep in a bed in an apartment he had entered to make repairs. After he proved unable or unwilling to do his job on a permanent basis, he too was fired.