Judge Deflates Union Tactics

By Hugh R. Morley, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.

Nov. 22–Few people like rats, but the one Joseph Chetrit fears is bigger than most.

The Englewood resident and New York City developer is fighting to stop a New York laborers union from erecting a 15-foot inflatable black rat outside his home.

At issue is what methods Local 79 of Laborers’ International Union of North America can use in its campaign to persuade Chetrit to use union labor on a project. The dispute, which is now in the courts, concerns a symbol of union activity that has become commonplace around North Jersey.

Court papers say the union first placed the rodent outside Chetrit’s home, on a grassy area between the sidewalk and the street, on Sept. 27. It reappeared each day for a week, and a smaller rat was erected there for a few days in early October — accompanied by one or two union members distributing leaflets, stating that Chetrit “allows workers to be exploited at his properties.”

Finally, on Oct. 24, Chetrit filed suit, seeking a restraining order to prevent the union from erecting the rat outside his home.

The developer — who is a principal with New York-based The Chetrit Group LLC — claims that union members have been abusive and confrontational to his family, which includes four children, ages 11 to 18, and that the project in dispute is not even his.

The family says they have feared for their safety, and have had to walk through a “gauntlet” to get into their house or out to the nearby synagogue, court papers say.

Two weeks ago, Superior Court Judge Robert P. Contillo granted Chetrit a temporary restraining order that prevents the union from putting the rat outside his home. The union also cannot distribute leaflets within 60 feet of the Chetrit’s family driveway.

Contillo will hear arguments Dec. 7 to determine whether the restraining order should be continued, said Steve Klein, Chetrit’s attorney.

“It’s not about a rat,” Chetrit’s wife, Nancy, said in a brief interview from the family’s Englewood home. “It’s about a right to privacy, and intimidation.”

But the union says it is merely pressing its case for Chetrit to use union labor on a project. The union, in court papers, cited the New Jersey Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits a judge from preventing people from “giving publicity to the existence of, or the facts involved in, any labor dispute, whether by advertising, speaking, patrolling, picketing.”

Neither the union, nor its attorney, Vincent M. Giblin of Iselin, could be reached for comment.

Yet it’s unclear whether Chetrit is even the person they want to pressure.

The union targeted Chetrit in the belief that he is developing a property at 855 Sixth Ave. without union workers. The union also put the rat outside that property, and The Chetrit Group’s Fifth Avenue office.

But Chetrit says in court papers that neither he nor the company have an interest in that project, which is being developed by his brothers.

His attorneys have argued that because he isn’t in a labor dispute with the union, it isn’t protected by the Anti-Injunction Act, according to court papers.

Contillo disputed that claim. But he said that “the Chetrit’s New Jersey home has absolutely nothing to do with this New York labor dispute.”

“A huge inflatable rat outside a job site or office is one thing,” Contillo wrote. “Its placement a few feet from a private residence is quite another.”

The judge noted that one of Chetrit’s children has “seen a counselor over the issue.” And he rejected a union attorney’s comparison of the inflatable rat to the balloon characters in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“It is the hostile placement immediately adjacent to the home, towering over the sidewalk, directly facing the home, with the rat’s claws and teeth bared, that creates the intimidating and menacing effect,” Contillo wrote.

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