NEW Yorkers are used to seeing rats on the street but they are not always small, furry ones. Sometimes they are inflatable and taller than giraffes.

American unions use giant balloon rodents as a protest symbol, parking them outside company offices to highlight labor disputes.

“It’s used to display injustice,” said union organizer Justice Favor, beside a towering air-filled rat with a scabby belly, buck teeth and demon eyes.

His organization representing laborers set up the rat outside the Manhattan offices of a developer it accuses of paying construction workers non-union wages one recent morning.

“The public stop and want to know what’s going on. It’s a great tool to make folks aware,” the 37-year-old said.

Inflatable rats were first used by a union in Chicago around 30 years ago. They started becoming a familiar sight on the streets of New York in the late 1990s.

“Scabby the rat,” as it has become known, has its own Twitter page and even featured in an episode of hit mob drama “The Sopranos.”

Not all passers-by know what the inflatables are about though, so union workers stand on the sidewalk and hand out information about each specific dispute.

“I first thought it was because of all the rats on the subway. Then I read the leaflet,” said hair stylist Zarinah Ali .

The inflatables are made by Big Sky Balloons, an Illinois-based company which proudly boasts on its website to be Scabby’s creator.

They can reportedly cost thousands of dollars.

New York unions own dozens of the balloons, which range in height from six feet (1.83 meters) to 25 feet. Some look more fierce than others.

They also have inflatables depicting fat cats smoking cigars while clutching bags of money, pigs in waistcoats and top hats and a cockroach.

“If we were to assemble them all on the same day it would look like Macy’s parade!” said union leader Mike Hellstrom, referencing New York’s annual Thanksgiving day march.

Hellstrom, who is credited with introducing the rats to New York, says they are hideous, looking to give “a true representation of what exploitation looks like.”

Management often, understandably, get irritated by the depiction and have even burst rats with a pin on occasion.

The inflatables are increasingly coming under a more serious form of attack though, which threatens to exterminate them and raises arguments about freedom of expression in America. (SD-Agencies)