Biscuit World union effort rooted in West Virginia history

ELKVIEW, W.VA. » While making biscuits and meatloaf at a fast-food restaurant during the coronavirus pandemic, 64-year-old Cynthia Nicholson often thinks back to her husband’s coal mining days in West Virginia.

In that job and in his time as a pipefitter, she said, the work was grueling and sometimes dangerous — but there were standards for safety, working conditions and wages, and people felt they were treated fairly. She said that was because he belonged to unions.

At Tudor’s Biscuit World in Elkview, a franchise of a regional chain that serves comfort food, Nicholson says workers have no such protection. With the coronavirus surging, she doesn’t feel safe.

So, a few months ago she did the only thing that makes sense to her: She reached out to her late husband’s union friends and asked for help. On Tuesday, after months of organizing, National Labor Relations Board officials will count votes cast by some of the franchise’s roughly two dozen workers to find out if it will become the first unionized fast-food restaurant in the state.

The push for a union in this mountain town of fewer than 2,000 people echoes a larger national movement of organizing among retail and food service workers. In a business where workers have routinely been asked to stay on the job and interact with the public during the pandemic, they hope forming a union will give them more say in how they are treated.

The effort also resonates deeply in a state with a storied history of labor activism, coming 100 years after the largest worker uprising in U.S. history erupted in West Virginia coal country.

“We’re tired of being treated as badly as we’re being treated,” Nicholson said. “The workers are treated with no dignity, no respect, like they’re just a number.”