Beer for Work

After more than a decade out of work, because of chronic alcoholism, Fred Schiphorst finally landed a job and is determined to keep it. His workday begins unfailingly at 10 a.m. - with two cans of beer, a down payment on a salary paid mostly in alcohol. He gets two more cans at lunch and then another can or, if all goes smoothly, two to round off a productive day. "I'm not proud of being an alcoholic, but I am proud to have a job again," said Mr. Schiphorst, the grateful beneficiary of an unusual government-funded program to lure alcoholics off the streets by paying them in beer to pick up trash. In addition to beer, each member of the cleaning team gets half a packet of rolling tobacco, free lunch and 10 euro a day, or about $11. Mr. Schiphorst said he started drinking heavily in the 1970s after he found his first wife, who was pregnant with twins, dead in their home from a drug overdose. He has since spent time in a clinic and tried other ways to quit but has never managed to entirely break his addiction. "Every day is a struggle," he said during a lunch break with his work mates. "You may see these guys hanging around here, chatting, making jokes. But I can assure you, every man you see here carries a little backpack with their own misery in it."