They Said “No More Inflatable Rats,” Not “No More Inflatable Cockroaches”

Although it’s unclear whether it’s happening because of legal troubles or just a large rebranding effort, it appears the giant inflatable cockroach is here to stay:

No doubt, you’ve seen those giant inflatable rats around town, which union representatives sometimes station in front of work sites to protest the hiring of non-union labor. Perhaps you’ve stopped even noticing them. Their bared fangs and claws and red eyes no longer startle, as they did when they began turning up, fifteen or so years ago. They have become as unremarkable as sneakers hanging from street lamps.

And so the cockroach cometh. The cycle of indifference requires intermittent escalation, ever more lurid sequels. Roaches may be preferable to rats, if you’re talking apartment infestation, but, when it comes to street-corner-protest infestation, they may be worse.

. . .

Since December 14th, Local 78’s organizers had been setting it up on weekday mornings outside the apartment building (some days they brought a rat or a gorilla instead) to call attention to a tenant there who had apparently hired non-union workers on an asbestos-removal job at a building downtown. They handed out flyers (“Shame!”) with the tenant’s name, photograph, and home-phone number, and with a photograph of a young woman who died of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. The neighbors seemed to be siding with the tenant. (According to a doorman, an elderly man in the building had found the cockroach so repellent that he tried, without success, to wrestle it to the sidewalk.) And it was scaring some of the kids. Still, the roach has its admirers. One organizer said that workingmen had been coming down from the Bronx to get a look at it.

“Unions are diversifying,” [Local 78 organizer Eli] Kent said. “It’s not your grampa’s union. People are too used to the rat. It’s just like clichés, right? An analogy can be good, but, once people use it all the time, it ceases to have any meaning.” Kent also pointed out that lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board had recently made the argument that erecting an inflatable rat was an unlawful picketing act. This designation does not affect inflatable skunks or cockroaches.