Scabby the Rat Lives, But His Enemies Never Sleep
The labor movement’s iconic inflatable rat has survived a pathetic judicial attempt at extermination. But though Scabby is free, unions remain hamstrung by the oppressive federal prohibition on secondary boycotts encoded in the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
A local teamster gets Scabby the Rat ready for a protest in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, 2010. (Juana Arias / the Washington Post via Getty images)
After a years-long crusade within the federal government against the labor movement’s favorite inflatable picket-line prop, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has granted reprieve to Scabby the Rat.
The campaign to exterminate Scabby, an enormous grotesque balloon villain symbolizing anti-union employers, was a personal project of Peter Robb, who was appointed by Donald Trump to be the board’s general counsel in 2017.
Decades prior, Robb had worked on behalf Ronald Reagan to sue striking air traffic controllers, whose brutal defeat in 1981 is generally considered a turning point in the labor movement, portending its steep decline. After that, he worked for an anti-union law firm called Proskauer Rose.
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