NY Minutes: Fat Cats and Righteous Rats
" Ratting on the fat cat over the road on 21st and 10th Ave, Chelsea, Manhattan. Have you seen this large inflatable rat around town? I always thought it was a giant advertising balloon for a vermin extermination company doing their mouse-mulching in the building immediately behind. Clever! But no - it's actually the protest mascot of construction industry unions. "Come in! Take photos!" said a picketer in a hardhat plastered with a "UNION" sticker when I stopped by with that typical "what's up with that?" expression on my face. He pointed across the road to a wooden skeleton of a building alive and crawling with the sound of hammers and hi altitude girder-walkers. "The owner is employing non-union workers at minimum wage, like five bucks, no benefits." I looked around at the apparently unionized throng languishing behind the barricade, all dressed up, iphoning, and nowhere to jackhammer. "A union member gets p