MORGANTOWN, West Virginia. — The Monongalia County Commission says it will not negotiate with workers at the Monongalia County Assessor’s Office who recently joined the UMWA.

“West Virginia law, for its part, does not recognize the right of public employees to strike or to be represented by a union for the purposes of collective bargaining, mediation or arbitration,” said the president of the Commission, Sean Sikora.

UMWA District 31 Vice President Mike “Biggin” Payton has attended commission meetings in recent months and said the union has no plans to deviate from the secret ballot results calling for representation by the UMWA.

“People overwhelmingly voted to be represented by a union, and we won’t stop until their voices are heard,” Payton said.

Sikora cited a case from the 1990s involving the Jefferson County School Board v. the Jefferson County Education Association, which is established law that makes it illegal for public employees to unionize.

“In this case, civil servants do not have the right to strike in the absence of express legislation or, at the very least, appropriate legal provisions for collective bargaining and mediation,” Sikora said.

Payton believes the law used by the commission is wrongly applied to public officials and only governs public educators.

“We think the part of the law that they’re using is about educators, about public education and not allowing teachers to strike,” Payton said.

Sikora said employees can be affiliated with or support an organization, but legally they cannot interfere in the employee-employer relationship within a government unit.

“Even though public employees may decide to support a public organization, that does not give that organization the right to represent those employees in collective bargaining,” Sikora said. “The commission is unwilling to voluntarily grant representation rights to third-party organizations when those rights are not recognized by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.”