Top Russian official asks bomb and missile producers to stop drinking at work

Talk about a potentially nuclear hangover.

Russian employees who assemble bomb and missiles are (thankfully) being told to stop drinking on the job, or else they’ll have to pay a high price… for humankind.

A top Russian official is urging state-owned arms producers to submit an ethics code in order to eliminate alcohol abuse in the workplace. While addressing human resources directors of major state-owned companies, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets stressed there was a “propensity for alcohol abuse” at those plants, the Associated Press reports. Present at the meeting were manufacturer of air-defense missile systems Almaz-Antei and nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Golodets added that the “lack of discipline” displayed at these plants would come with a “high price not only for the factories, but for humankind.”

She also urged factory directors to take the lead and cut down on their booze consumption, particularly at office parties.

“I myself have seen corporate parties which were nothing like corporate parties,” she told the officials in comments carried by the Interfax news agency.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that in 2012, 30 per cent of Russian fatalities were attributable to alcohol, the highest ratio among the nations it tracked.