Scabby the Rat is hard to miss. Towering over the sidewalk, covered in sores and boils, face contorted in a red-eyed sneer, this huge inflatable rodent has become a fixture on picket lines across the country.
Scabby is one of the most recognizable symbols of managerial misconduct. But where did he come from? The answer is far from straightforward; it turns out this rat has a complicated history.
IUOE Local 150
In one version of the story, Scabby first scurried into the public eye not as the giant inflatable we recognize today, but as a human being in a rat costume. According to Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents workers in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, IUOE organizers Jim Sweeney and Bob Paddock introduced the rat theme by adding cartoon rats to signs on a picket line outside a hotel. The vermin were great at drawing public attention. (Who wants to stay in a rat-infested hotel?) But despite all their rage, they were still just some rats on a page, so the union decided to ratchet up their visibility by purchasing a rat costume from a local stagehands’ union. Scabby had gone from motif to mascot. The costume was a hit.
Unfortunately, as Local 150 put it in their own history of Scabby, “The rat suit was even more effective, but it came with one drawback: It was notoriously difficult to clean the suit without destroying it. With frequent use over long days in the hot summer months, the rat suit quickly took on a formidable aroma, and was often assigned to the newest organizers on staff.”
That might have been the end of Scabby, but for one eventful Saturday morning. Sweeney was driving to Local 150’s District 1 hall when he passed a car dealership that was using an inflatable gorilla to advertise. Inspiration struck, and soon Local 150 had an inflatable rat of its own. The union solicited ideas for the rat’s name in the form of a contest, which was won by rank-and-file member Lou Mahieu, and in the January 1990 issue of their newsletter, the Local 150 executive board introduced Scabby to their membership.
IUBAC and modern Scabby
There is an abundance of primary evidence proving the authenticity of Local 150’s story, but they aren’t the only union that takes credit for Scabby’s creation. The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (IUBAC) argues that Scabby originated in the Chicago suburbs. IUBAC also claims that Scabby was created in 1990, which means that, whichever story you believe, Scabby is definitely a millennial.
According to IUBAC, organizer Ken Lambert was searching for ways to draw attention to a picket when he spotted a billboard for Big Sky Balloons & Searchlights. He called Big Sky on the spot and asked them to build him a rat balloon. Peggy O’Connor, who owns Big Sky Balloons with her husband Mike, recalled to the Chicago Tribune that Lambert rejected Mike’s original designs for Scabby, saying “[Lambert] said he wanted it meaner looking, with festering nipples and big claws.” IUBAC claim that the original Scabby, festering nipples and all, now resides in storage in their Chicago office.
The resilience of the rat
There are two versions of Scabby’s origins, and there’s no reason not to believe both IUOE and IUBAC’s accounts. As In These Times editor Miles Kampf-Lassin remarked, “I think [Scabby] was, in fact, created through the collective consciousness brought about by decades of struggle.”
It’s undeniable that Scabby has become ubiquitous in labor disputes across America. He has even become the frequent subject of disputes himself: Labor lawyer Tamir Rosenblum told NPR that he has represented the rat “at least 50 times.” Scabby came closest to extermination in 2019, when Trump’s National Labor Relations Board attempted to argue that use of the rat was not protected by the National Labor Relations Act or the First Amendment because he was “being used specifically to menace, intimidate and coerce in aid of an unlawful purpose.”
But Scabby is one resilient rodent. He survived Trump’s would-be exterminators, and, despite being the victim of frequent stabbings (as a rat-shaped balloon, Scabby is highly vulnerable to sharp objects), has managed to proliferate across the country. Many unions have amassed healthy populations of Scabbies – in 2023, a representative of Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) estimated that they had “40 or 50” rats just in their eastern region, while an IUBAC representative put their rat collection at 60 rodents, minimum. The original Scabby’s offspring may now be found anywhere a boss withholds fair wages or hires non-union workers for a union job. As cheesy as it may sound, their presence is a sign that the labor movement is alive and well.
