Senator Bernie Sanders rallied supporters to picket lines in cities across the United States on Thursday as McDonald’s workers walked out on strike to fight for a $15 minimum wage, union rights and for McDonald’s to address workplace violence and sexual harassment issues.

The Sanders campaign is using its extensive email list to turn out support in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Tampa, St Louis, Milwaukee and several other cities.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has increasingly used its voter data to rally support for the labor union movement. The campaign has previously enlisted supporters to turn out for rallies, protests and strikes for workers at Delta Airlines, Disney, Amazon, General Motors, Wabtec, Nissan, teachers in Los Angeles and most recently in support of workers at the University of California, who conducted a one-day strike earlier this month over the university system’s practices of increasingly relying on an outsourced and privatized workforce.

“As Bernie says, this is not just a campaign, it’s a movement. We’re building the largest volunteer army in the nation not just to win the Democratic nomination, but also to mobilize people to show up in key fights where people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line,” said Claire Sandberg, the Bernie 2020 national organizing director. “We are proud to uphold Bernie’s commitment to workers and we will continue to activate our supporters and urge them to join picket lines across the country to support the fight for a strong labor movement.”

Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally in Warren, Michigan, in April. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

The Sanders campaign is hosting a video town hall with striking McDonald’s workers in Dallas, Texas, where McDonald’s is holding their annual shareholders’ meeting.

“If Amazon can raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour there is no reason that McDonald’s, a company that took in $1.4bn in profit and paid its CEO $22m, can’t pay its workers a living wage,” said Sanders in a statement. “I am proud to stand with workers demanding $15 an hour and a union.”

“We’re going on strike to demand union rights. We need a union for basic things like healthcare, a seat at the table and respect,” Bleu Rainer, a McDonald’s worker in Tampa, Florida, told the Guardian. “I’ve been working in the fast-food industry for about 11 years. I started out at $7.11 an hour and now I’m only at $9 an hour. I don’t think that’s fair to any worker.”

The Democratic presidential candidates senator Cory Booker, Julián Castro and Jay Inslee are also joining workers on the picket lines.

The one-day strike comes in the wake of 25 sexual harassment charges and lawsuits filed by workers against McDonald’s earlier this week. The allegations include several instances of retaliation for reporting sexual harassment and failure from McDonald’s to take the issue seriously. More than 50 charges have been filed against McDonald’s over the past three years.

Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report on workplace violence at McDonald’s restaurants, examining 721 violent incidents reported in the media over the past three years, a small fraction of the incidents occurring at McDonald’s.

According to the report, in Chicago an average of 21 calls to emergency services are made on a daily basis from McDonald’s restaurants. Several workers in Chicago filed a formal complaint on 20 May to Osha (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) requesting the agency to force McDonald’s to develop, implement and maintain a violence prevention program.

“Workplace violence is all too common and a very serious hazard facing McDonald’s workers. Its happening at almost epidemic rates to workers and stunningly the company has not stepped forward to protect workers when there are easy and commonsense solutions they can implement right away,” said Deborah Berkowitz, worker health and safety program director at NELP and the author of the report.

Berkowitz previously worked at Osha as chief of staff and senior policy adviser. In the report, Berkowitz cites McDonald’s needs to develop a system-wide culture of violence prevention that includes hazard prevention controls, better training and post-incident response procedures.

McDonald’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

