But after a set of recent memos and court filings from the National Labor Relations Board, some are worried that Scabby (and the rest of his anthropomorphic balloon menagerie) could soon be exterminated. In documents filed in various cases around the country, the board has argued that the labor movement’s deployment of inflatable balloons like Scabby was unlawful.
The positions taken in the documents, which depict Scabby and others of that ilk as a disruptive form of illegal picketing, threaten the use of a powerful symbol that has helped union organizers draw attention to their campaigns against employers, labor leaders said.
“If you put up a balloon, if you put up something large and visible, then people will wonder what’s going on,” said Jerry Gozdyra, an organizer with Local 1 of the Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers in New York. “And they will ask questions, and I have an opportunity to educate the public.”
But the five-member labor board, which is controlled by Republicans, and particularly the office of the board’s general counsel, Peter B. Robb, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, appeared to view Scabby as something closer to the pest it depicts.
Just two weeks ago, Robb’s office filed a brief in a case in Philadelphia arguing that a union that placed two inflatable rats near the entrance to a hotel essentially “crossed the line from legitimate communication to unlawful coercion.”
Also, in a memo filed last December — but recently reported on by Gothamist — a lawyer from Robb’s office advised the board that Fat Cat, a 10-to-15-foot inflatable feline who sports a cigar in its mouth, a suit jacket around its torso and an inflatable construction worker choked in its paw, was a form of illegal picketing.
Last month, the labor board asked a judge to stop a local construction union from using Scabby the Rat and an inflatable cockroach in its protests against the owner of three supermarkets on Staten Island. The board’s request was denied by a federal judge in Brooklyn, but the case is continuing.
The NLRB declined to comment on any of the documents, saying that its representatives could not discuss pending cases or litigation.
But Tamir W. Rosenblum, general counsel for the union in the Staten Island case, said that the board’s arguments appeared to set up a larger fight over union actions and free speech. “Based on our case, it’s not about the inflatables,” he said. “It’s about any form of protest.”
While Scabby and similar inflatable rats have become prominent figures in New York, they have been used as a symbol by unions across the country for decades.
Like many famous New Yorkers, Scabby made his way here from elsewhere. The first iteration was created for a union based in the Chicago area around 1990, though two different unions have claimed a portion of the rat’s origin story and responsibility for its name. Organizers were searching for a powerful symbol that would rally protesters and send a message to business owners. They settled on a giant rat, meant to depict bosses who did not treat their employees well.
The early Scabby balloons were created by Big Sky Balloons and Searchlights, a company in Illinois. The company’s co-owners, Peggy and Mike O’Connor, were not available for comment Tuesday, but Peggy O’Connor told Vice in 2013, “They wanted a mean, ghastly looking kind of rat.”
The result: a larger-than-life gray rodent with a scab-riddled pink belly, prominent fangs and glowing red pupils that give it an imposing, menacing air.
These days, Big Sky makes Scabby in sizes ranging from 6 feet to 25 feet tall. (The average brown rat in New York City is 16 inches long.) The company also produced Fat Cat and Greedy Pig, a bubble-gum pink swine whose vest pockets are stuffed with cash.
The balloons can cost thousands of dollars.
Many unions own multiple rat balloons. Gozdyra said he knew his local had more than one, as well as a 10-foot inflatable Uncle Sam balloon. Richard Weiss, a spokesman for the union involved in the Staten Island case, said his local had eight rats, in addition to a cockroach and other symbols.
Over the years of Scabby’s prominence, several cases have come before the NLRB pertaining to the rat. Rosenblum joked that he been “defending the rat” since 2001, during George W. Bush’s administration.
But judges and courts have consistently found that the rat did not constitute picketing, a regulated and restricted action, and was instead a protected form of free speech.
Samuel Estreicher, a professor at New York University’s law school and director of its Center for Labor and Employment Law, said the labor board generally makes its rulings based on past case law.
In at least three cases during the Obama administration, which are cited in the board’s recent memos, judges said that as long as Scabby and its inflatable friends were stationary and did not obstruct people from entering a business, unions could deploy the balloons.
So for the status of these inflatable balloons to change, Estreicher said, the board would need to wait for a case to come before it, and only the general counsel’s office could carry out the necessary adjudication.
“He’s opening it up,” Estreicher said of the memo filed by Robb’s office in the Chicago case.
Both the memos argued that balloons like Scabby served a similar function as picketing in intimidating nonunion employees from reporting to work or potential customers from entering a location.
That was a notion that Gozdyra, the New York-based organizer, scoffed at.
“This is just a balloon! How intimidating could it be?” he said.
In his experience in New York, Scabby had become a beloved cult figure, and part of the city’s landscape.
“If they’re going to make the rat illegal, even the public is going to be disappointed,” Gozdyra said. “If I go handbilling without it, they pass us by, asking ‘What happened to the rat? Where’s the rat?’ ”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.