If you’ve seen a picket line protest, you’ve probably seen a huge inflatable rat.
What the hell does this have to do with union protests?
Well for starters, the rat’s name is “Scabby”, a reference to the old union term “scab” used for those who busted up the picket lines.
According to the Twitter handle of “Scabby”, a fixture of union protests the last decade:
The symbol of Scabby appearing at a strike is a clear signal to the public that the management is attacking its workforce and the public by using unfair and unsafe practices. Such signals are not often clearly received by the public, in part because labor relations is not a simple topic. A 12-foot inflatable rat helps to make the message much clearer.
Yes, because nothing makes a message clearer that a group of adults are acting like children than a 12-foot inflatable rat.
However, the rat has now been co-opted to protest against the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and they are none-too-pleased:
Even the right wing occasionally sees the value of Scabby; as Mike Elk reported, in 2011, the front group Americans for Job Security brought a rat (not the model rat trademarked by Big Sky Balloons, it’s worth noting) to the NLRB to protest what they called its “job-killing” agenda. Americans for Job Security is of course interested in anything but Job Security-it was founded by Republican operatives and shares a message and a “media buyer” with American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s outfit for electing probusiness Republicans. But the attempt to co-op the rat showed the value of this particular kind of symbolic speech.
Karl Rove is like the Kevin Bacon of politics. How many degrees can we go to find him?
And why would Republicans not be interested in job security? Aren’t all Americans, Republican and Democrat, losing huge numbers of jobs under Obama’s administration?
Blogger Stefanbc, writing in defense of the rat, called for workers to get more confrontational, not less. He recommended watching the Oscar-nominated documentary How To Survive a Plague, looking at the way ACT UP shook up the complacent government that was willing to let people with AIDS, mostly gay men, die.
1) It’s fascinating to see people finally admit that the majority of AIDS victims are gay men and not heterosexuals, unlike during the panic in the 1980s that everyone would get AIDS
2) There is zero, and I mean zero evidence that the government “was willing to let people with AIDS, mostly gay men, die”.
But back to the real rats. It’s a sign that someone’s message isn’t strong enough to stand on its own when they have to raise it on the back of an inflatable. Real workers in tough spots face higher and higher union dues (which they are compelled to pay) that end up going to $8000 toy rats instead of actually improving the lives of workers.
