Boozing WTC Workers Get the Boot

By JENNIFER MILLMAN

Updated 9:45 AM EST, Tue, Jun 30, 2009

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Two (former) World Trade Center workers can now drink to their hearts content at lunch. Anyone else want to join them?

A couple of World Trade Center construction workers who had taken to getting sloshed during their lunch breaks before going back to the site can now drink before noon without fear of reprimand: That's because they no longer have jobs.

Two men, whose names have not been released, got the boot by the Port Authority after The New York Post caught them pounding beers and shots during their lunch "happy" hours last week, the paper reported. A Post photog had snapped shots of them at a Murray Street pub where Ground Zero construction workers have been known to imbibe, and the supplier running the job they were working on identified them to site officials.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy for alcohol and drugs on the job, and the workers we identified were terminated," Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund told the Post. "And if we can identify any others, they will be terminated, too."

The employees who got canned worked for Phoenix Constructors, which has taken the lead in building the World Trade Center's transit hub. The company, along with other site contractors – Tishman Construction and Bovis Lend Lease – cautioned their hires about the consequences of engaging in such lewd behavior on the job, the Post reported.

If last week's report is any indication, however, a bunch of other workers could get axed. The Post exposed the drunken lunch habits of about a dozen hard hats – workers downing up to eight drinks apiece before climbing up to precarious heights when they went back to work an hour later.

Post reporters followed around construction workers for a week, watching them head to bar and pub-lined avenues at about 11:45 a.m. for their hour-long break. Two weeks ago, reporters spotted three men slam down two shots of whiskey and three beers each before returning to work, candidly talking about their drinking habits on the job. The following Wednesday, the trio went back and ordered the same set of cocktails. And then on Thursday, the group took lunchtime drinking to a whole new level.