Missouri Union Protests by Placing Giant, Inflatable Rat by Funeral Home

I wish I was making that up, but Laborers Union Local 110 actually placed a huge, inflatable rat in front of the Kutis Funeral Home in St. Louis County, Missouri. The reason: to protest the fact that the funeral home didn’t contract with a union company to do work on their parking lot. The Kutis Funeral Home has employed union embalmers and drivers since the 1940s.

A reporter asked the manager of Laborers Union Local 110, “What’s your response to the people who thought it was disrespectful to the dead and their families?”

His response?

“How does it disrespect the dead and their families?”

You can’t make this stuff up! I don’t think I want to know how out of touch with reality somebody has to be that they can’t understand why placing a giant rat in front of a funeral home is just slightly offensive. And people wonder why the public approval of unions is staying below the historic averages.

The disgraceful display at the Kutis Funeral Home is just another example of unions going too far. Missouri has been a labor battlefield ever since right-to-work and paycheck protection laws were proposed to protect individual workers from compulsory unionism. Both laws were passed earlier this year by the Missouri House, but are currently dead in the water, thanks to the Democratic-controlled Missouri Senate. Missouri Republicans are likely to try the bills again next year and let’s hope they pass this time around so people don’t have to involuntarily associate and fund organizations that blatantly disrespect the dead.

Maybe unions can also help get those bills moving by putting more inflatable rats in front peoples’ graves.