It Has Hot Pink, Angry-Looking Nipples

Hubba hubba:

It has hot pink, angry-looking nipples and eyes. Its fang-like teeth match menacing claws. It’s a 30-foot-tall inflatable rat and it’s been seen recently at a Starbucks, the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere.

A union protest fixture in the city, the rat has become a symbol of labor tension. Two even made an appearance on The Sopranos.

“The labor movement needs to get creative and colorful, and the rat is a creative, colorful way to highlight the behavior of an employer,” said Daniel Gross, an IWW Starbucks Union organizer. “The rat conveys a message.”

“We’ve done cockroaches, skunks, bulldogs, even a corporate fat cat wearing a striped suit, smoking a cigar and choking a union worker,” said Mike O’Connor, owner of Big Sky Balloons & Searchlights, the Plainfield, Ill. company that designed and sells the rat.

O’Connor designed the rabid pest back in 1990, when a Chicago union man called asking for something his members could picket with, suggesting a “dirty rat kind of thing.”

The first rat O’Connor designed was “basically a cutesy rat, but he wanted something mean, with fangs. So I went back to the drawing board and made the rat how he looks today.”

Unions all over the country order the rats — and recently an order came in from Nova Scotia — but New York, New Jersey and other northeastern states are O’Connor’s biggest clients. Big Sky sells about 100 of the inflatable rodents every year.

. . .

Some employers respond in kind. Last October, musicians in Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Extravaganza went on strike. Their employer placed an inflatable cougar over the marquee, baring its teeth at the protesters and any rats they might have brought with them.

Rat:

See also: Sir, Step Away From The Rat*, which seemed to indicate that the rat was on its way out.

*I think this upheld the judge’s decision in that case — so what gives? Labor specialists, let us know where the rat stands!