Unions' Inflatable Rat an Endangered Species by Jessica Marquez, workforce.com
"This is the potential Pied Piper case,” says Gerald Hathaway, a partner at the law firm of Littler Mendelson. “It will be an opportunity for the National Labor Relations Board to decide that all uses of the rat would constitute picketing.” While this does not mean that the inflatable rat will disappear altogether, it may become an endangered species as unions avoid having their protests viewed as actual picketing.
Even if the rat is exterminated, however, there are other animals that unions can turn to, says Lowell Peterson, an attorney at New York-based Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein who is representing the Laborers Eastern Region Organizing Fund. Already some unions have started using skunk and cockroach balloons, he says. “There are plenty of other animals.”