When facing a legal case that received national press and has potential ramifications for the entire country, our union has not backed down. On behalf of the Mannix Family ShopRites, the Presidentially-appointed lawyers of the National Labor Relations Board attempted to shut our protests down and stop our use of inflatable rats to speak out against worker exploitation. In blatant disregard of our right to free speech, Peter Robb, the NLRB General Counsel, has launched a vendetta against Scabby the Rat, which is no surprise because he used to work as a union-busting lawyer. Rising up against this attempted violation of the 1st Amendment, rank-and-file members of Local 79 and our allies throughout the labor movement rallied at Federal Hall steps, where the Bill of Rights was proposed and ratified. MTDC General Counsel Tamir Rosenblum believes that this “campaign to eradicate workers’ free speech is an attack on us all. Our inflatable rats are raw symbols of dissent and I am confident we will legally prevail.” A federal judge denied the initial injunction request against us, but we know that the fight is not over.
