'Right to work' figure at OU draws protest on campus

A group of roughly 75 Ohio University students and local and regional residents – many of them union members – gathered outside of Galbreath Chapel on College Green Monday evening to protest a speech from a lawyer associated with the “right-to-work” movement who successfully argued the Janus v. AFSCME U.S. Supreme Court case in 2018.

Lawyer William Messenger, an OU alum and staff attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was invited by the university’s George Washington Forum to give a “Constitution Day” lecture at Galbreath Chapel entitled “Can Free Speech be Compelled? The First Amendment and Speech Rights.”

“Right to work” refers to a series of laws in roughly half of all U.S. states that ban employees in unionized workplaces from negotiating contracts with their employers that require all workers who benefit from the union contract to pay for the cost of the union’s representation.

Ohio voters most recently in 2011 voted down a ballot initiative that would have implemented a form of right to work.

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