Radical Republicans Want
To Exterminate The Inflatable Union Rat
By
Bill Schleicher
Through a labor board
it controls, the Trump administration is trying to kill a beloved union symbol,
Scabby the Rat. This latest attack on the First Amendment free speech rights of workers is part of its effort to convert our government’s Department of Labor into the Department of Bad Management.
Sharp-fanged,
red-eyed, and scabrous bellied, the giant inflatable rat is in real danger of
extermination by Trump, never a friend of labor.
Scabby is one of the
most recognizable symbols of today’s enlivened labor movement. Filled with
helium, Scabby is visible for blocks at labor protests. Unions fly Scabby in
front of unsafe and anti-union
company facilities to shame companies into improving conditions
for workers and alert consumers to bad businesses.
Unions fly Scabby in
front of unsafe and anti-union company facilities to shame companies into
improving conditions for workers and alert consumers to bad businesses.
Trump claims to be the
champion of the Forgotten Man, but his administration is focused on shrinking
rights to overtime pay, decertifying unions and moving millions of working
people from employees with at least some legal protections into the gig economy
as “independent contractors” without even the possibility of union rights.
Team Trump animus to
workers is so vicious that it even extends to a potent symbol that the worst
employers know draws attention to their cruelty, dangerous policies and
exploitation of workers.
Since 1990,
Scabby has shown up wherever workers rally and organize and fight for living
wages—from Chicago to West Coast wharves to the neon-lit Las Vegas Strip to New
York City.
Now the Trump-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to murder Scabby, establishing that this peaceful expression of free speech rights is effective in advancing the interests of working people.
Now the Trump-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to murder Scabby, establishing that this peaceful expression of free speech rights is effective in advancing the interests of working people.
Union leaders have
consistently beaten back previous legal challenges to Scabby in state and
federal courts. Then Trump named
Peter Robb, a partner from the notorious union-busting Proskauer law
firm as the NLRB general counsel.
Today when you call
the labor board, a recorded message says the agency stands for “your right to
join with other employees to improve your wages and working conditions.”
But Robb’s mission has been to search out and destroy as many labor-friendly rulings as he can find, Bloomberg reported.
But Robb’s mission has been to search out and destroy as many labor-friendly rulings as he can find, Bloomberg reported.
Robb has targeted
Scabby since the day he was confirmed in 2017. In July this year, Robb’s office
filed a brief calling Scabby “unlawful coercion.”
An advice memorandum for the board by his associate general counsel declared it illegal for unions to use Scabby and his inflatable comrades Fat Cat and Greedy Pig to protest unfair employer practices.
An advice memorandum for the board by his associate general counsel declared it illegal for unions to use Scabby and his inflatable comrades Fat Cat and Greedy Pig to protest unfair employer practices.
The NLRB position
was rejected on July 1 by U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas
Garaufis. That has not stopped Robb and the Trump majority on the NLRB.
Previous decisions
finding labor protests, including a mock funeral, were lawful are under
attack. Robb says those
cases were wrongly decided, an argument that has a better chance of
succeeding now that every ninth serving federal judge is a Trump appointee.
Robb called the
cartoon balloons a “coercive” and “unlawful” form of picketing because they
create a “symbolic, confrontational barrier to anyone seeking to enter or
work.”
Free Speech
But the courts say
that is false, ruling that the inflatables are a protected form of free speech,
as long as they are stationary and do not obstruct entrances.
Robb’s opinion came in a battle over wages at a Chicago construction company, where workers turned around and headed home after they saw the business-suited Fat Cat figure, clutching moneybags and choking a hard-hatted laborer.
Robb’s opinion came in a battle over wages at a Chicago construction company, where workers turned around and headed home after they saw the business-suited Fat Cat figure, clutching moneybags and choking a hard-hatted laborer.
“This issue has been
litigated for decades because unions and the workers they represent should have
effective means to make their case to the public,” Frederick Feinstein, a
former NLRB general counsel, told DCReport.
“The inflatable rat
never crossed the line of coercion. This is another effort to curtail unions’
effective appeals for public support.”
Feinstein said that
when he was general counsel in 1994 to 1999 such an advice memo “would never
have been written without my permission.”
“Coercive? Blowing up
a balloon is a lot better than throwing a punch!” plain-spoken Chicagoan Peggy
O’Connor told DCReport.
Serve a Purpose
She and husband Mike
run Big Sky Balloons,
which makes the inflatables. “These figures let people know others are upset.
They serve a purpose – American free speech. What about the First Amendment of
the Constitution?”
The Chicago case was
finally settled, but Robb’s memo could now tilt the decision of an NLRB
administrative judge on the pending complaint of a supermarket owner about the
two Scabby the Rats that appeared outside his Staten Island store.
Scabby will not go to
rat heaven peacefully. The NLRB can expect a lawsuit defending Scabby as an
exercise of free speech rights and attacking the Trump administration efforts
as an attack on the First Amendment, said Richard Weiss of Local 79 of the
Laborers International Union of North America.
That union keeps eight of the rats and a giant inflatable cockroach at the ready. “When you walk down the street and see a 12-foot rat, it calls attention to your issues,” he told New York Public Radio station WNYC.
The Laborers Union is
also fighting Trump administration efforts to weaken its apprenticeship
program. Yes, in his inaugural address promised to look out for the
“forgotten man” Trump forgot to mention women.
Trump’s relentless
assault on America’s working men and women is also shown by his nominating as
Labor secretary Eugene Scalia, son of the late right-wing Supreme Court
justice.
Scalia is well known as a management lawyer opposing workers’ protections from repetitive stress injuries, helping Sea World evade safety rules after an employee was killed by an orca, and vacating class actions to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Scalia is well known as a management lawyer opposing workers’ protections from repetitive stress injuries, helping Sea World evade safety rules after an employee was killed by an orca, and vacating class actions to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Scalia has also fought
Labor Department rules to safeguard workers’ 401(k) savings. Those rules were
adopted after our co-founder, David Cay Johnston, exposed how
easily corrupt bosses could steal their workers’ retirement
savings in award-winning articles in The New York Times.
The victims had little success in recovering their money because of weak laws.
The victims had little success in recovering their money because of weak laws.
