SILVER SCURRIES AWAY FROM UNION 'RAT' TRAP
By FREDRIC U. DICKER and STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN

June 11, 2005 -- ALBANY — Embarrassed Democrats yesterday canceled an important fund-raising event in the city after union leaders threatened to show up and brand Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver a "rat" for killing the West Side stadium.

The union members — fuming that they won't get thousands of stadium-construction jobs — had planned to launch a picket line at next Friday's event and bring along two large inflatable rats normally reserved for use at work sites that employ "scab," or non-union, labor, sources said.

Silver, the state's most powerful Democrat, had been slated to be honored at the Salute to Labor event at the Tavern on the Green restaurant, along with Fran Turner, legislative director of the Civil Service Employees Association, the state's largest public workers' union.

But late Thursday, Turner withdrew from the event under pressure from leaders of the ironworker and carpenter unions. Yesterday, the Democrats pulled the plug on the event.

"It'll be rescheduled. It's been postponed," insisted one Democratic official.

Another source close to the event called the can- cellation "a big embarrassment to the Democrats and to Shelly Silver."

Silver insisted the event was canceled because the Assembly will be in session next Friday, not because of the threatened protest. However, the official calendar of the Legislature lists Friday as a non-session, or non-working day.

Silver said early this week he had decided to block Mayor Bloomberg's bid to build the stadium that would be the new home of the Jets.