NEW YORK —  Hundreds of Ground Zero workers were exposed to potential identity theft when stacks of payroll sheets — which included their names and Social Security numbers — were dumped in the trash along with confidential plans for the new World Trade Center.

The sensitive information was listed on attendance sheets for union workers hired by a construction company in 2003 to help clear the site of debris from the Sept. 11 attacks. The discovery left the hero hardhats who worked tirelessly at the site of the collapsed World Trade Center towers stunned and furious.

"The documents should have been shredded. They shouldn't have been put in the Dumpster like that," said a worker for the Dockbuilders Union who helped shore up the retaining wall that holds back the Hudson River.

"I'm not happy that my Social Security [number] was in the garbage," he said, asking that his name not be printed. "At the very least, they have companies that come to do the job of shredding documents."

The payroll information was found by self-described "salvage experts" in a trash bin behind 115 Broadway — which houses offices rented by the Port Authority to run the rebuilding effort.

Click here to read the entire story in The New York Post.