What does a 20-foot-tall inflatable rat have to do with the long history of public expression in the labor rights movement? The answer: a lot more than you’d expect.

Picture a terrifying sight: a hulking rat balloon, as tall as a yellow school bus is long, whose aesthetic is similar to Venom from Spider-Man. The large, oval eyes on each side of its face are completely red, its mouth turned upward in a snarl above a row of jagged, yellow canines that protrude from either side of the critter’s infamous front two buckteeth. Not only is the abomination probably blown up in the middle of a public sidewalk teeming with passersby, but it’s likely placed right in front of a business local union workers are publicly protesting. 

“It’s definitely a sight,” says Don Villar, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL). “One thing that Scabby the Rat does is draw attention to a problem. If there’s a big Scabby the Rat there, there must be a labor issue there. Naturally, passersby will stop and ask, ‘What’s going on? Why do you have a big inflatable rat in front of the building?’ And our organizers and labor activists will explain that, well, we got a contract fight near, [or] they’re paying substandard wages, or they’re using nonunion labor, they’re violating law—they’re just not treating workers right.”

The CFL acquired their Scabby two years ago. Since then, organizing director Marcus Shepherd—who joined the federation from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades—has been Scabby’s “shepherd.” CFL lends the inflatable to smaller union affiliates, like the Chicago News Guild, for demonstrations. 

Villar recalls a 2022 incident in Springfield where members of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers Local 112 protested outside a funeral home for using nonunion labor. During the action, one of the facility’s employees walked out and stabbed the inflatable. Villar guffaws over the phone as he recounts the incident to the Reader. “Scabby has been attacked, maligned, but he’s a resilient symbol of the fight for workers’ rights.”

The earliest records of the political critter date back to 1988. At the time, the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150—which represents about 23,000 workers in northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and southeastern Iowa who operate heavy construction equipment like cranes, bulldozers, and excavators—held demonstrations against several equipment rental shops. 

The union got word that a local shop owner was to be honored during a dinner at a nearby hotel. Marilyn Sweeney, wife of current Local 150 president and business manager Jim Sweeney, came up with the idea of drawing rats on a poster board and standing outside the building saying, “This hotel’s got rats!” to make a scene against the businessman inside who they were striking against. 

“Signs with the rats were so effective,” says Local 150 spokesperson Ed Maher, “that one of our other organizers had a friend in the stagehands union who created a rat costume, like a rat suit. That was used for a while but, since it’s pretty delicately put together, it couldn’t be washed. And because these suits are used all day in the heat of the summer, the rat suits would get a little bit gamey.”

From there, the idea grew more bold. By 1989, the union had created an inflatable rat that would pop up out of a luggage carrier on the roof of organizers’ cars. They painted the cars yellow, called them the “rat patrol,” and displayed Scabby (then commonly known as Mr. Rat) at construction sites all over the midwest. By December 1989, the union was ready to formally name their unofficial mascot and held a naming competition for the honor. The next year, the operating engineers announced in a local newspaper that “Scabby” was the winning submission, put forward by member Lou Mahieu, who won a Local 150 jacket for his efforts. 

Now, Scabby was ready for world domination. The operating engineers assembled “rat packs,” which included a painted yellow car with a roof rack, an inflatable rat, a pump, and a generator to sell to union locals around the country. The rest is history.

Or so you’d think. Another union also lays claim to the beloved rat. 

In suburban Elmhurst, members of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (IUBAC) Local 56—which represents tuck pointers, tile setters, terrazzo workers, marble setters, plasterers, and precasters—claim that Scabby’s origins lie with them. But their story begins in 1990.

Don Newton and Ken Lambert started the bricklayers organizing program in Chicago. Newton’s daughter, Susie Sundblom, a tile setter of 20 years, recounted their rendition of Scabby’s genesis to the Reader. Lambert was stuck in traffic one day when he noticed a large inflatable gorilla in front of a car dealership. Amused, Lambert called Newton and suggested the two procure a rat balloon, inspired by the gorilla. The pair contacted Big Sky, an inflatable manufacturer, and asked for a large rat balloon they could use for pickets. Big Sky was skeptical, so they made the two pay for the balloon up front before making anything.

When pressed for a time line on the events, Sundblom says she’s stumped because all the guys that were at Local 56 the first few times they rolled the rat out are “retired or dead.”

What about her thoughts on their competitors across the state? Again, Sundblomis speechless. “I have no idea what they were doing in their office. All I know is that Ken came up with this inflatable. But then again, I was a young teenager while all this was going on. So the actual time line I cannot honestly attest to because that’s not something that I paid attention to.”

IUOE Local 150 is familiar with these claims, and there are congressmen and universities who’ve stood behind IUBAC’s claims as well.

“There’s another union, the Bricklayers District Council [IUBAC], and they’ve been on record in the past and in other publications saying one of the organizers was driving down the street in the summer of 1990 and he just had the brilliant idea to come up with an inflatable rat,” Maher tells the Reader. “I’ve got copies of our newspaper in November of 1989 that have pictures of the inflatable rats, pictures of the contest, where he’s named Scabby. So Scabby, the inflatable rat, existed in 1989. Anybody saying that they came up with the brilliant idea in 1990 isn’t quite possible. It always makes me scratch my head when I see this.”

Robert Bruno, professor and director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the use of the inflatable rat has been, almost from its creation, a recognized form of legal and constitutional publicity. Unions have a free speech right to send a message about the substandard quality of an employer. In labor disputes, an inflatable rat is equivalent to a big banner and has, for most of its existence, been recognized as speech protected by the First Amendment. 

Workers have a right to picket, though there are restrictions on what they can do on a picket line, how many people can be on it, and how threatening it may appear. Employers can ask judges to place restrictions on picketing if it’s seen as coercive and, therefore, unlawful. But there’s a much higher standard for the government to restrict speech. The state must show a real risk of danger before it can censor protected speech. 

“Passersby know it’s not a giant real rat. They can tell it’s an inflatable,” Bruno says. “It’s not keeping anybody from walking into a building. Nobody’s going to suffer any harm. So this isn’t a picket, this is speech. And therefore it’s lawful. That’s what the current law [says]—it’s a form of constitutionally protected speech.”  

According to Bruno, the idea of impactful public messages in support of workers dates back to the 1880s. Unions might’ve had a member who excelled at painting, or songwriting, or dance. Picket lines often featured bands and choirs to keep up workers’ spirits and to grab the public’s attention. In the 1920s, one union put on a Broadway show called Pins and Needles, composed entirely of workers, which became the longest-running musical of its time. 

“In those years, where unions were establishing their right to exist, these strategies and tools were widely used and very popular,” Bruno says. “Why music? Why dance? Why was theater used? Why do you do all that stuff? Well, because people need to be moved emotionally. And that’s in part what Scabby taps into. There’s a kind of emotional reaction. Because you feel it, as opposed to [me handing] you a chart with lots of numbers on it [that] don’t make sense to you.”

The U.S. Supreme Court first established a union’s right to protected speech in the 1988 case DeBartolo Corp. v. Gulf Coast Trades Council. In this case, a union peacefully distributed flyers, a process known as handbilling, outside a shopping mall. The pamphlets asked patrons not to shop at the mall because a construction company working for one of its tenants paid substandard wages. In its ruling, the high court held that discussing general labor disputes and low wages either through flyering or via radio advertisements is a protected First Amendment right. The case clarified that unions can conduct informational activity without it being considered picketing. 

Lawrence Township, a New Jersey suburb, in 2009 levied a $100 fine against an official from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 269 for displaying an inflatable rat at a rally outside a fitness center. The case made its way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where all seven justices dismissed the fine. The court ruled that, while a municipality is entitled to maintain an “aesthetic environment,” it cannot enforce content-based restrictions on expressive displays that aren’t for business and sales purposes. 

In 2014, the rat made its appearance in federal court. MicroTech, a New York–based company, asserted that labor union Mason Tenders’ District Council violated its collective bargaining agreement’s no-strike clause by displaying Scabby at a demonstration. Again, our balloon buddy came out on top. Then-U.S. district judge Joseph Bianco pointed out that banning the rat was similar to banning any general speech that could be construed as harmful to the company’s image. 

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed lawsuits against unions across the country, including IUOE Local 150, arguing the old, tired sentiment that Scabby is “coercive and illegal.” The operating engineers’ union spent a year and a half defending these lawsuits, until 2021 when the NLRB eventually ruled that “displaying a 12-foot inflatable rat with red eyes, fangs, and claws” was not a violation of labor law.

“Many times over the last 25 years, other states and federal circuits have taken up cases involving Scabby the Rat. And they found time and time again that an inflatable rat is a tool of free speech,” Maher, Local 150’s spokesperson, says. “It’s effective. And so it became under attack by those who would try to take advantage of workers.”

Back in the Illinois suburbs, IUOE Local 150, IUBAC Local 56, and their communities all consider Scabby the Rat an old friend. In Plainfield, operating engineers blow up rats at their family picnic each summer, and you’ll catch families posing with Scabby for holiday cards. At IUBAC Local 56’s community Labor Day parade, the union brings out all the inflatables—Scabby the Rat among several others—and all the kids love it. 

Maher says his favorite story about Scabby involves Jim and Marilyn Sweeney. The couple was sitting in their living room at home watching The Sopranos when an episode came on featuring an inflatable rat in a labor action. Sweeney just looked over to his wife and smiled. 

“Looks like your drawing has gone a long way.”