Alejandra Marcos wanted to make sure other employees didn’t have to go through what she did when she spoke up about not having regular access to water and restroom breaks as a potato packager at the Kettle chips plant in Salem.

Her bosses reduced her hours, then suspended her and fired her in August 2022 after she began organizing with other workers that year to protest their working conditions, according to her National Labor Relations Board complaint.

A few days before her firing, Marcos was “informed of a work rule in which employees are prohibited from raising concerns or complaining of terms or conditions of employment as a group,” according to the labor board document.

Marcos, a single mother of four children, this summer won a $35,000 settlement with Snyder’s-Lance Inc., which ow

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