A cook at the Chinatown Matchbox location prepares a pizza. (Photo by Vincent Gallegos)

On May Day, as hundreds of people marched from Meridian Hill Park to the John A. Wilson Building, the crowds made a stop at Matchbox Restaurant on 14th Street NW.

But it wasn’t to grab a quick bite. “Shame!” marchers chanted at the pizza chain as former employees talked about getting fired for trying to better their working conditions.

Now, those five employees have reached a settlement with Matchbox brokered by the National Labor Review Board.

Ana Hernandez, Altagracia Reyes, Alejandro Roman, Lucas Efrain, and Angel Morales will get lost wages and other benefits since their terminations in March, and Matchbox will post signs in English and Spanish outlining workers’ rights to collectively organize for better conditions at their locations in Pentagon City and Chinatown, according to Many Languages One Voice, one of the non-profits which helped the workers fight their termination.

It is against federal law to fire or otherwise discourage employees from participating in or forming labor organizations.

“Thank you to all of the people who supported us and for the strength you gave us. Now I can say that we won,” Hernandez said in a statement.

Matchbox has not responded to a request for comment. The chain has 11 locations, largely in the D.C. metro area.

“Everyone is very pleased,” says Hannah Kane, an organizer with Many Languages One Voice. “We’re hopeful that, for workers who are interested in organizing, this will give them more confidence that they’ll be able to do so, and if they experience retaliation, they’ll know that the rest of D.C. has their back.”

Hernandez said in testimony posted in a petition that she had worked for Matchbox for almost eight years, and before her termination, had recently been transferred from the Chinatown to the Pentagon City location.

“As soon as I started at Pentagon City, I saw the amount of abuses that there were there. There was no break, we didn’t eat all day, we didn’t even want to drink water because there wasn’t any time to go to the bathroom,” said Hernandez. “I started a petition and asking my coworkers to sign to demand better working conditions.”

Four days later, Hernandez was fired, she says.

Reyes signed Hernandez’s petition. Two days after Hernandez was fired, she went with three colleagues to Matchbox’s corporate office. “We told the president of the company about the abuses that we were experiencing in his restaurant. But the next day the chef sent me a text that just said, ‘No más trabajo (no more work),'” she said in her testimony.

Roman, Morales, and Efrain were all fired at the same time from the Chinatown location of Matchbox, two weeks after they participated in the “Day Without Immigrants” strike on February 16, according to their testimony.

None of the employees sought reinstatement at their jobs through the the NLRB process, which began on April 21 of this year. Representatives of the NLRB declined to comment on the case.

“Thanks to [supporters] we crossed the finish line with our heads held high and did not remain silent,” said Reyes. “You have to speak to be heard.”

Here are the flyer that Matchbox needs to post in their Chinatown and Pentagon City locations in English and Spanish:

Flyer courtesy of Many Languages One Voice.

Flyer courtesy of Many Languages One Voice.