Biden-appointed NLRB rules can use giant inflatable rate at protests
Here's Scabby on the picket line during the 2013 strike at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, Westerly Hospital's owner at the time. Photo by Will Collette
President
Joe Biden can start saying, “I’m the guy who saved Scabby The Rat,” now that
the National Labor Relations Board has shot down right-wing efforts to
permanently deflate one of organized labor’s most valuable tools.
On
Wednesday, the NLRB — led by Biden-appointed Lauren McFerran — issued a 3-1 decision upholding
the right of unions to deploy the large balloon in ongoing labor disputes.
Biden
fired former NLRB head Peter Robb on his first day in office and subsequently
replaced him with McFerran. Robb, the infamous
union-busting lawyer who helped President Ronald Reagan crush the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981, was a
Donald Trump darling who had long harbored a deep-seated hatred toward Scabby The Rat. Robb was
itching to eradicate him as soon as possible.
With
Robb at the NLRB’s helm, emboldened anti-worker business owners around the
country soon stepped up their efforts to keep Scabby the Rat caged and far away
from their doorsteps.
Scabby
references the word scab, a derogatory name for a strike-breaker.
In 2019, the owners of a ShopRite supermarket being constructed on Staten Island in New York City, tried to block Laborers Local 79 from using Scabby the Rat to challenge the use of nonunion labor.
The
Robb-led NLRB then moved to stop Local 79’s use of the garish balloon. But days
before July 4 celebrations, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled against
the supermarket. The owner’s beef didn’t “outweigh the First Amendment
implications of restricting a union’s ability to publicize labor conflicts—nor
do they justify adopting a ‘novel and unprecedented’ application of the
statute.”
Hundreds
of trade unionists packed the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street that summer
— site of George Washington’s inauguration as first president of the United
States. They denounced the NLRB’s actions as not only an attack on labor, but a
brazen assault on the First Amendment rights of all Americans.
“The
one thing we have to defend ourselves is free speech,” Local 79 organizer
Bernard Callegari told fellow trade unionists. “They want us to be quiet while
they steamroll over our families —I don’t know about you, but you’re not gonna
shut me up.”
Fellow
Local 79 organizer Chaz Rynkiewicz reminded his union brothers and sisters that
Trump was responsible for Robb’s ascension to the NLRB.
“Trump
can give a good speech [about how] he wants to help the workers in America —
but then he went out of his way, looked long and hard to find an anti-union
lawyer.
“This
guy made millions of dollars breaking unions, and then Donald Trump appoints
him the head of the NLRB.”
William
J. Emanuel, another Trump appointee whose NLRB tenure ends Aug. 27, was the
only member to vote against “Scabby The Rat” this week.
Democrats
will regain full control of the NLRB following the confirmation of two other
Biden appointments — Gwynne Wilcox and David M. Prouty.
Joe
Maniscalco is a journalist and freelance writer based in New York
City. His work has appeared in a variety of news outlets ranging from the
NewYorkPost.com to Alternet.org. He's spent the last decade covering workplace
justice issues, the American Labor Movement and steadfastly avoiding well-paid
corporate media gigs.