Did New York City Union Bosses Order Slow Down Of Snow Removal?

Loading

The New York Post is reporting that the snow disaster in New York may have been caused by an organized slow down by city workers. According to one politician, who says he speaks for a few whistleblowers, the union bosses ordered the snow removal drivers to slow it all down in protest of the belt tightening going on:

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.

~~~

…They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”

But the Post has some of their own sources inside the department and they were told a different story:

But multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised.

And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay.

One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.

So which is it? A protest or laziness?

I’m thinking it’s a little of both. They don’t like the fact that since the economic crisis hit 400 trash haulers and their supervisors have been laid off and after the first of the year another 100 supervisors are getting demoted. So I’m betting they are being lazy on purpose but is it organized? Can’t put it past union bosses to try some kind of stunt, no matter how ignorant it is. No way this wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass. Plus, much of the “organized protest” story came from a politician who will be one of those blamed for the poor performance of the snow removers. We can always count on a politician to point the finger at something else.

Meanwhile The New York Times is reporting a delay by city officials in declaring a emergency is the real culprit since that would have allowed the workers to pull cars parked in specially designated snow emergency routes and given much easier access to plows.

At 3:58 a.m. on Christmas Day, the National Weather Service upgraded its alert about the snow headed to New York City, issuing a winter storm watch. By 3:55 p.m., it had declared a formal blizzard warning, a rare degree of alarm. But city officials opted not to declare a snow emergency — a significant mobilization that would have, among other things, aided initial snow plowing efforts.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority entered the holiday weekend with modest concerns about the weather. On Friday, it issued its lowest-level warning to subway and bus workers. Indeed, it was not until late Sunday morning, hours after snow had begun to fall, that the agency went to a full alert, rushing to call in additional crew members and emergency workers. Over the next 48 hours, subways lost power on frozen tracks and hundreds of buses wound up stuck in snow-filled streets.

By 4 p.m. Sunday, several inches of snow had accumulated when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a plea for help at his first news conference about the escalating storm: he asked people with heavy equipment and other kinds of towing machinery to call the city’s 311 line to register for work. A full day had gone by since the blizzard warning had been issued.

This week, as Mr. Bloomberg conceded that the city’s response to the blizzard had been inadequate, many theories, in both shouts and whispers, have been offered to explain the shortcomings: the Sanitation Department had undergone staffing cuts; the ferocity of the snowfall and the power of the accompanying winds had presented extraordinary challenges to the city’s snow plows; angry sanitation workers had sabotaged the efforts; city residents had ignored common sense and wound up stranding their cars in streets across the five boroughs.

~~~

The city has long had a weapon in its arsenal to consider for such moments: the ability to declare a snow emergency.

Doing so allows the city to ban vehicles from parking on more than 300 designated “snow emergency streets.” Vehicles that remain after the declaration can be ticketed or towed. And any vehicles moving on those streets must use chains or snow tires.

The rationale is straightforward: clearing vehicles from those streets gives plows the best chance to move through them rapidly, keeping emergency services routes open and allowing the plows to move onto secondary streets.

Norman Steisel, who was at the forefront of snow removal in the city for a dozen years during the Koch and Dinkins administrations, said the declaration of an emergency from a mayor also helped clarify among the public the confusing array of forecasts often heard on television.

“It’s a very strong, powerful public message which has a certain effect,” Mr. Steisel said.

~~~

But the Bloomberg administration decided not to call a snow emergency. One city official briefed on the response to the storm said it was explicitly considered. But ultimately Mr. Doherty and Ms. Sadik-Khan decided against it, said Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for Ms. Sadik-Khan.

Mr. Solomonow said the forecast was not severe enough.

And apparently the outrage at snow plowing by New Yorkers is common every winter.

But all in all this sounds like everyone has a piece of the blame. City officials for not declaring a emergency quick enough and workers for taking the easy way out. But I’m doubting the validity of a organized protest.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
45 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Prison time…go get your butt blasted…DO NOT! collect your pension.

Ace is right – if this is true, then the public needs to know and the people in charge need to be punished – that also goes for Daddy BigBucks Bloomberg!

If the unions were pulling a protest slow down to teach someone a lesson, wouldn’t they have done it to the rich people and politicians who live in Manhattan? Manhattan was quickly and efficiently plowed out, multiple times. I hate to be cynical but can’t help but think that a clever political spin-doctor came up with some spin that they “leaked” to the Post. I mean who’d leak anything real to the Post?

Class Action lawsuit

Ever been to New York, Curt?

it doesn’t matter if it was an organized response by the unions, their performance was not what they were being paid for, Fire them all and cite the poor performace of people who are suppose to be able to prevent this from happening. Dont even touch the rumor of it being organized, show future supervisors that if they can’t do their jobs effectively then they will be fired.

The sad (or ironic) thing for the union is that people in New York city pay to have someone remove snow from their walks when it happens…..but they pay the City every week all year round for the streets to be cleared on the one or two snow storm days in a year.

So the people look at what they pay versus what they get for the money and say, this sucks.

As far as the people see it, the union is biting the hand that feeds it.

And that is how it looks even if logistics eventually prove the union did all it could after this storm.
A baby died.
I think that goes a long way toward making the union look bad.

Everybody knows someone with a horror tale of being stuck.

People are comparing their NY experiences with NJ where every street was quickly and repeatedly cleared so there were no issues about getting where you wanted to go (as long as it was IN New Jersey, that is.)

The unions may have pulled a slow down…..or maybe they didn’t….but either way their job performance looks bad.

There is no way you can fire a union thug, period. I recall an old boss once saying, “the only I can fire this jerk is to gather enough information relating to his incompetence in a file so large that when I hit him in the head with it he will never get up”.

SeeThroughNY lists the pay these sanitation workers are getting.

The top guy, John Doherty, earned $205,180.

The next 315 sanitation workers earned over $100,000 in 2009.

There are 12,904 total workers in the sanitation department, btw.
That’s counting aids for a day or two who only got $12/hour, however.

The Daily News reported that, although lots of streets went unplowed, sanitation workers promptly plowed the street in front of Doherty’s Staten Island home.

Why don’t you “urban” dwellers leave?

So which is it? A protest or laziness?

It might be nothing more than another fabricated, anti-union propaganda piece.

Rupert Murdoch has turned the New York Post into little more than a tabloid journalism scandal sheet since he took it over.

A baby died because the ambulance couldn’t get to the baby and mother. How selfish these men and women are to let the unions dictate who lives and dies. They all should be held on charges of manslaughter at the very least. The parents of the newborn have every right to sue the city and win. However nothing will ever bring back that precious baby.

disenchanted, there’s been something weirding me out about that “newborn” story…

I first heard on the news that she had called when she went into labor. But of course, with most 911 response predictably paralyzed with the weather, it was not to be answered to quickly. So, again per that initial report, the pregnant mother started walking to the hospital.

WTF? First of all, I don’t know anyone who’s ever called 911 to have a baby (unless known breech births or multiple births). Generally, they aren’t popping out immediately on your first labor pain. Secondly, pregnancy isn’t an illness, and babies have been delivered at home, in vehicles, even in crop fields, fer heavens sake. Why leave a building a walk to a hospital?? Third, most end of term mothers to be have friends that are aware of your due date.

Then, according to this Daily News article, it’s a 22 year old college student, who not only didn’t tell her parents about her pregnancy, but also had the baby up for adoption.

I’m genuinely sorry for the newborn’s loss of life. But I’m not looking at this woman as being a victim of NY’s inability to plow roads because they are idiots. In fact, I’m questioning that mother’s own irreponsible actions that unnecessarily endangered that baby’s life. I can’t imagine she was in a building without anyone near by, or couldn’t find those that would help deliver a baby. I fear there is more to this story than meets the eye, and that the newborn never had a chance with that particular mother – who was hiding the baby’s existence, and giving it away anyhow.

Bloomberg is going to have it investigated, as well as Gov. Patterson, and Sanitation Commissioner Doherty thinks it needs to be looked into.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/30/new.york.snow/index.html?+Inc.

Right Greg. The NY Post broke a story but because the NY Times, the most trusted source of news in where was that again, didn’t, the NY Post is now “a tabloid journalism scandal sheet “. I am glad Greg hasn’t decided to think for a New Year’s resolution.

Remember also that these are the same people that elected what’s his face. Union thugs.

Let me translate what Greg said:
Because they post things I don’t like but can’t can’t refute, I just accuse them of writing a false story. That way I can continue pretending I’m right and not examine my values and the egotistical motives behind them.

Mata, the timeline in the article you linked is also interesting….

1) The pregnant woman was walking from her home to the nearby hospital in the still-swirling snow when she ducked into the building lobby, unable to make it any farther.

2) An 8:30 a.m. 911 call was made, with the caller saying the birth wasn’t imminent, a Fire Department source told the Daily News. The call received a low priority, and the city unsuccessfully tried twice to contact the caller during the next few hours, the source said.

3) A second, more urgent 911 call at 4:30 p.m. reported the woman was bleeding and the baby was crowning – and the call was upgraded to level two, the source said.

4) An hour later, [5:30 p.m.] the NYPD contacted the FDNY/EMS to report the baby had been delivered but was unconscious. Cops cut the umbilical cord and tried to revive the newborn, police source said.

The call was then upgraded to level one – highest priority – and an FDNY crew arrived in 12 minutes, sources said.

5) EMTs were on the scene at 6 p.m.

So, police were there to cut the cord after the birth.
But apparently they could not get the baby to breathe.
There is no indication the woman made any of the calls herself….or some of them.
She may have made none of them, relying on others to call for her.
I can’t imagine being stuck in a building’s entryway and having my own phone but saying don’t bother hurrying out, the birth was NOT imminent.

Hard Right
17Reply to this comment

The Greeks called this fallacy of logic: Killing the Messenger.
Back in those days I think they really killed a few of them, too.

Nan G, yes they must have kill so many, that we kind of lucky to have survived
all those generations of killers,,
bye and a good WISH FOR THE NEW YEAR
‘S COMING LIKE A LION, A WHITE LION.

Video: NYC councilman repeats charges of sanitation “snow slowdown”

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/30/video-nyc-councilman-repeats-charges-of-sanitation-snow-slowdown/

Maybe where there is smoke, there is at least a small fire! Maybe the NY POST is just a little more likely to print all of the news instead of “tabloid journalism scandal sheet” greg!

How can a public sector union stage a work slowdown?

What’s more important to Bloomberg- salt use in restaurants or salt use on roads?

Mata and Nan — Thanks for “the rest of the story” on the dead baby.

Did you spot the tires on that front end loader? Some of the tires have no lugs and none have snow chains. You spin out on ice or hard packed snow. The bucket is only a third full. Not very efficient. This union guy should be done by March.

Nan, Greg seems to be killing the messenger alright. Those Greeks were quite clever, but very human. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Greg is a hardcore leftist pretending to be a moderate. Folks like Greg desperately want to avoid facing reality and not looking at the evidence in the first place helps them do just that.
My brother is a radical leftist who has threatened to turn my parents and myself in to the “government” should the day come that they are seeking “subversives” to jail. Like I have said, I know leftists better than they know themselves.

Sometimes the “messenger” deserves to be killed because they have repeatedly proven themselves to be dishonest. Most items from Puffho, DUNG, KOS, media maters, and MSNBC fall into those categories.
Other times it doesn’t hurt to at least check into the claims. This is especially so when what is claimed is not entirely implausible. Other times it’s a good idea just to ensure one isn’t swallowing something simply because it fits one’s perceived notions.

Hard Right, that’s what they are telling their followers to do just like HITLER DID and they torture people which where given to the party by their own family member,
just the fact that he said that mean that it was demanded of them,
and I heard some one at FA mentioning the same at another one of our group,
this is getting dangerously too far, when we know that the worse happen in another country,
the most danger of it is that it’s so incredible that we tend to disbeleive the possibility of rehappening the destructive power of HITLER’SS TROOPS OF VERY YOUNG TRAINED TO SELL THEIR OWN TO PLEASE THEIR PARTY,THEY ADORED HITLER AND WHERE READY TO SELL THEIR SOUL FOR HIM, THERE LYE THE MOST DANGEROUS PART IN THEIR PROPAGANDA
NOT BEING CHECKED, AND ALLOWED TO GROW TO BECOME ANOTHER MONSTER.

@ Hard Right, #25:

Folks like Greg desperately want to avoid facing reality and not looking at the evidence in the first place helps them do just that.

What evidence?

The reality was 50 mph winds and 20 inches of snow accumulating at a rate of 2-3 inches per hour, which was simply a lot faster than it could be removed. You can’t plow snow from city streets because there’s no place to plow it to. You have to haul it away. Add to that cars and buses abandoned in place on the streets, trains unable to move, etc. I don’t think we need to resort to a conspiracy theory involving city workers to find a reasonable explanation for the consequences.

The problem with the story–and any number of stories like it–is that people with an obvious political agenda are getting their mileage out of it without having to provide a shred of evidence that any of it is true. If this follows the usual pattern it will be repeated across Murdock’s media outlets until many people assume that it is true. Once that’s accomplished, it won’t matter whether evidence turns up or not.

The mayor’s office said they didn’t cut sanitation budget at all. The sanitation department said they were down a bunch of workers. WTH…Who lied???

Is this the beginning of the “sky is falling” syndrome? Will we see this throughout the revamping that is in fact going to happen in every part of the government from city/county to the national level? I sincerely think, YES. Budgets have to slashed by billions of dollars . . . and the layoffs and terminations always begin at the lowest of levels. Do you think one of the CZARs is going to be “FIRED” . . . only if someone else is appointed to take their place! The pain is going to be intense as the “double pay” government employees are forced to seek regular paying jobs . . . if they can even find one. So many job positions within the government are RESTRICTED to government . . . there is NO equivalent in the civilian world. Thus, yes we are going to experience this at every level and it will begin just as this blizzard illustrates. Any and all government processes that directly interface with the citizens/voters will be the first to be hammered. Why, simple . . . the government believes that they are indispensible . . . that the government is us . . . that we the voters who are in pain will give them what they need to function. Just the paperwork alone that we all do to comply with government requirements will cripple our country when there is a reduction in staffing at the various levels that do the government side of the work.

Plan your time accordingly . . . soon . . . you will be given appointed times to do anything . . . see a doctor, for example . . . will be scheduled weeks if not months ahead of time . . . then you will get the opportunity to wait in a long line. Weeks and weeks of waiting at home . . . to wait hours and hours in a long line.

This is the way all military organizations work . . . “HURRY UP & WAIT”.

In every war . . . and most certainly we are in a sociological war . . . there is a first casulty . . . collateral damage . . . to bad in this, perhaps firing of the first shot . . . the casulty was a new born . . . would YOU expect it to be the indefensible to suffer first? The very young and the very old . . . die first in war. Go figure.

New York City, if you don’t have to live there for your livelyhood move. City sucks, except for Rockefeller Center at Christmas. Been there many times and it does nothing for me. High prices. High taxes. Rudy did the best job in recent years in running the place, but is normally run by a coalition of idiots with their own agendas. Rather be here in Texas.

City Councilman Dan Halloran was on Cavuto’s show yesterday answering questions about the union members that discussed the slow down with him in his office and compared this year’s snow removal with years past.

Here’s the transcript of the interview:

With us now, Republican City Councilman Dan Halloran, who says those workers confessed to him.

Welcome.

DAN HALLORAN (R), NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN: Welcome.

SULLIVAN: What were you told? Who met with you?

HALLORAN: Well, I got two phone calls — sets of phone calls from two different groups. One were DOT supervisors and the other were sanitation workers.

And it was very disturbing. They came into the office. These are constituents of mine, people who saw their community around them unable to get out of the snow — College Point, Bayside, Whitestone were completely snowed in. I had residents without power for two days because Con Edison could not get to the streets to clean the lines that were down. And these workers were very upset about it.

They were clear that their union, the sanitation workers union, wasn’t engaging in a slowdown, but that their supervisors, the people who are actually on the chopping block — there’s 100 supervisors who are going to be demoted for budgetary reasons by the mayor’s office.

We have had attrition rate of about 400 workers that were down over the past few years. There’ve been talks of further layoffs and further cuts. In fact, the mayor proposed going to one-day-a-week garbage collection this — just this past budget cycle.

SULLIVAN: So they are angry. OK? And let’s be clear about what you heard in these conversations.

HALLORAN: Sure.

SULLIVAN: It seems clear to you that these workers were saying that their supervisors were telling them and their crews to basically do a poor job as a means of protest?

HALLORAN: It’s — that is what they saying. They are saying that the shops that they worked in — the garages they worked in, all of which were in Queens — so I can’t speak to rest of the city — I can only speak to the Queens shops that they were working with — basically had the go-ahead to take their time, that they wouldn’t be supervised, that if they missed routes, it wasn’t going to be a problem, that they needed to send a message.

And ultimately in my district, the DOT employees who were secondary to the sanitation department were told to just sit and wait and they would get instructions as when to start cleaning up. Six, eight hours later, they were still sitting, waiting to clean up.

SULLIVAN: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg holding a press conference about this today. Let’s hear what he had to say in reaction to the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, MAYOR OF NEW YORK: I don’t think it took place. But we’re going to do an investigation to make sure that it didn’t. It would be an outrage if it took place. But I just don’t know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SULLIVAN: Well, the mayor saying it would be an outrage if it happened, but sort of questioning…

HALLORAN: Sure.

SULLIVAN: … I think you and whether or not these conversations ever occurred.

HALLORAN: Look, the mayor is being very circumspect. He’s gotten a lot of grief over the snowstorm.

In my entire life, I have never seen such a poor response from the city in terms of cleaning up after a snowstorm. Last year, we had about an inch and a half more snow, and in 24 hours, the streets were cleaned. What has changed between last year and now? What has changed between the snowstorm of 1996, which was the worst snowstorm that we have had in the last two decades, and now?

In 1996…

SULLIVAN: Well, the unions will say there are 400, what, some fewer sanitation workers who were cut.

HALLORAN: Here’s the problem with that. The math doesn’t work. We still had the same 2,500 units out in the field doing the snowplowing. So it didn’t change the math in terms of the number of equipment pieces that were out there. The assistance we received from DOT was actually greater this year than it’s ever been. And we also had private and secondary sources bringing equipment into bear as well.

The linchpin to all of this is the supervisors, who are responsible for targeting the locations, assigning the routes and ensuring they were cleaned up.

SULLIVAN: Quickly, would you believe this would be then maybe a rogue action by a small group of unionized sanitation workers or more union- wide?

HALLORAN: I am tending to think that it was the supervisor group, that some of these rogue supervisors, very irate with the mayor, very upset with his policies…

SULLIVAN: Yes.

HALLORAN: … were taking it out on us.

Don’t forget, though, 10 percent of the union work force also called in sick that day. So, over 500 union workers out of a total pool of 5,000 didn’t show up for work and called out.

SULLIVAN: Wow. Wow.

And, by the way, we did try to call the union. We didn’t get a response back from them. But they did call the story hogwash when The Post contacted them.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/transcript/new-york-lawmaker-claims-union-supervisors-dragged-out-snow-clean

MataHarley. perhaps the young woman is an idiot and from your description is; however the baby is an innocent. My focus was on the death of the child.

Greg, and Hard Right…..
I know all about killing the messenger.
I was really peeved when the John Edwards – Love Child story was breaking…..in the National Enquirer alone.
Either he had a baby or he didn’t.
His staff guy tried to take the fall for him.
No other media picked it up…..until well after the election was over.
But it was 100% true.

I STILL see bumper stickers touting Kerry/Edwards.

I guess when we have a COKE-head as president having a philanderer run was nbd.
We have really scrapped the bottom of the barrel.

Anyone want to bet Greg dismissed the story outright, THEN went somewhere to be told what he should say to argue against it?

Sorry Greg, but there does appear to be something to the story. How much MIGHT be determined, but I don’t have a lot of faith considering where the investigation is taking place.

The NY Post would be held legally liable if it reported outright fabrications.

However, it does report just about everything with a sensationalist, hyperbolic, tabloid style. It makes it hard to read, and I only do so when it’s sitting at my local bar or diner, or on a subway seat. I stopped buying it when they published a photo of an NYU student in mid-air as she dropped to her death, who was committing suicide, a few years back, on the front page. I found it very disgusting that they would do that to sell papers, and vowed not to buy their paper again.

As to the issue, this reminds me of the Subway union workers strike that occurred a few years back, which I wrote about at the time:

http://caryscolumn.blogspot.com/2006/01/worm-in-big-apple.html

Oh, and by the way… there are indeed problems, but nowhere near as bad as the media is making it out to be. We’ve seen snow before!

REPOSTED: Dont drink and drive, and don’t ride with anybody who does. TIPSY TOW offered by AAA: You don’t have to be a AAA member, from 6pm-6am on new years eve/day they will take your drunk self and your car home for FREE. Save this number… 1-800-222- 4357 Please re-post this if you don’t mind…help save lives!! Have a safe new years everyone!!

@ Cary, #36:

The NY Post would be held legally liable if it reported outright fabrications.

Who’s going to sue the Post over the story? They haven’t identified any guilty supervisors, nor have they identified any of the workers who supposedly made allegations against them. The story is quite a well crafted bit of work, reinforcing anti-union and anti-public employee sentiments while presenting nothing specific that can be disproved.

MinuteMan N.Y.C. is a GREAT city.Nothin but steers and queers in Texas.

Cary Agree N.Y. Post is for the most part sensationalist journalism.

Nan G. “Cokehead as Pres” You talkin about “W”? Is that confirmed?

Cary I’ve had 2 glasses of Merlot but heading out for big NYE here in So. Cal.I’ll always love New York where I grew up.

Exit Question You guys don’t trust the “lame stream media” why the faith in the credulity of the N.Y. Post?
Semper Fi

Rich,

Dealt with folks in both Texas and upper state NY and can say they are both far more down to earth than NYC folks not to say that they are all bad either. Would you tell a Texan that they were queer to their face? As for downgrading the queers, your party repealed DADT!

Sensationalist journalism. That’s what helped to turn the American people against the WOT and get BHO elected.

Cokehead for a president? That could be BHO who admitted to doing it or WJC whose own brother publicly stated he had a nose on him like a vacuum cleaner so don’t assume it was ‘W’.

I’ve had some Strohs tonight. An off brand for most folks! But it is the only fire brewed beer in America or so they say.

A good motto- “Believe in none of what you hear and half of what you see”.

AIRBORNE!

Poor Rich has never even read ”Dreams From My Father!”

Here’s the money quote:
“I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though—….”

Yeah, it was BHO.
During the 2008 campaign BHO was interviewed and said: “Look, uh, you know, I, uh, when I was a kid I, I inhaled, ah, frequently, that was, uh, that was the point, um….”
He also made a hand motion to his face as if he was bringing a joint to his lips during the quote.

We can use snow as a weapon and we got another 6 inches of gorebull worming.

ENGINEERS !

Stupidity rather than slowdown appears to be the cause of SOME of these stories.

OK, for Greg, I’ll point out that the New York Post is the teller of this tale.

A group of on-duty Sanitation supervisors is under investigation for allegedly buying booze and chilling in their cozy department car for hours Monday night after the blizzard stranded a bus and three snowplows blocks away.

The city Department of Investigation is probing the incident after witnesses said four snow blowers blew off their duties to get blitzed, buying two six-packs of beer from a Brooklyn bodega. The workers then walked five blocks to their car, which was in 20 inches of snow in the middle of 18th at McDonald avenues near the F train entrance, passing the stuck bus and idle plows on 18th Avenue between Third and Fourth streets.

Customers who saw the group buying beer at the Ocean Mini Mart at 3917 18th Ave. in Kensington shouted at the workers.

“They were saying, ‘How can you do this? You should be outside!’ ” a witness told The Post.

But the Sanitation team was unmoved.

One guy said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We know what we’re doing,’ ” the witness recalled.

A block from the deli, six riders remained on the snow-stalled bus all night.

The supervisors had shown up at the deli near Ocean Parkway at 8 p.m. when a smiling, uniformed Sanitation honcho bought a six-pack of Heineken Light, the witnesses said. About 30 minutes later, another worker from the group bought a six-pack of Corona Light.

Later, they ducked inside their car and hunkered down.

“I saw them drinking, but I’m not sure what it was,” said a witness who lives in the area.

Read much more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/slushed_sloshed_fX907nPJIEevDILBvlYAtK#ixzz19v67cmVg