A nationwide protest against low wages in the US fast-food industry culminated in hundreds of arrests on Thursday, as activists stepped up their campaign for higher pay and better benefits for workers at companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC.

Protesters in more than 100 cities including Chicago, New York and Detroit took part in sit-ins and marches outside fast-food restaurants, with many conducting acts of civil disobedience designed to get them arrested.

Many fast-food jobs pay little more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Thursday’s day of action called for a minimum wage of at least $15.

By the afternoon organisers reported police had arrested 436 people nationwide with more than 43 arrests in Detroit, 19 in New York City, 23 in Chicago, 10 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 10 in Las Vegas. Protestors were arrested in New York after blocking traffic in front of a McDonald’s in Times Square. In Los Angeles police warned fast food workers sitting in the street they were part of an “illegal assembly” before arresting them.

“We’re definitely on the upward move because we feel justice is on our side … we can’t wait,” said Douglas Hunter, a McDonald’s worker in Chicago who said he has difficulty supporting his 16-year-old daughter on his hourly wage. “We think this is ridiculous in a country as rich as America.”

Thursday’s strikes were the seventh in a series that began as a local protest in New York two years ago. Each strike has been progressively bigger and organisers credit the movement with focussing the debate on low wage workers and reinvigorating president Barack Obama’s attempts to increase the federal minimum wage.

The latest protests mark a departure from previous efforts with protesters, many of whom were transported to the event by union backers, deliberately getting themselves arrested. So far there have been no reports of injuries.

A worker is detained by police during a protest outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Philadelphia. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

Despite strong opposition from Republicans and business lobby groups, there have been some significant moves to raise wages. Seattle recently increased its minimum wage to $15 and there are proposals of a rise to $13 in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Jeanina Jenkins, a McDonald’s worker from St Louis, Missouri, told the Guardian that $15 an hour would change her life. Jenkins, 21, lives at home with her mother and earns $7.97 an hour. “If I made $15 an hour I’d go back to university and study nursing,” she said.

“We do so much and get so little,” Kristine Fisher, a Los Angeles caregiver who earns $9.65 an hour told the Guardian.

The latest strike is being backed by the Service Employees International Union, (SEIU) which represents about 2 million workers across the US, mainly in healthcare, public services and property services including janitors and security officers.

The union has been moving to unionise more fast-food workers, but at the moment the process can only be conducted piecemeal, because workers are technically employed by individual franchise-holders, not the bigger chains.

But SEIU won a major victory last month when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that McDonald’s could be held jointly liable for employment and wage violations by its franchise operators. The move, which is being heavily contested, could force fast food firms to negotiate on wages and allow SEIU to unionise restaurants on a larger scale.

Police arrest demonstrators who were protesting for an increase in wages in Chicago, Illinois. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Arun Ivatury, campaign strategist for National Employment Law Project, said: “We talk a lot about responsibility in this country but corporations have to take responsibility too. I am confident that we are now at a moment of change.”

On the South Side in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood, protestors locked arms and sat in the street for about 15 minutes until police dispersed them in the rain. Nineteen people were arrested. The protestors sang the traditional labor song, “We Shall Not Be Moved” and speakers, including two Chicago aldermen, spoke about the injustice of working a 40-hour week and still remaining in poverty.



Brittney Bell, a McDonald’s employee for three years, says she works for $8.25 per hour, which she says makes it impossible to raise her family. “I want to tell those who are afraid to step up because we deserve it, we work so hard … that’s the only way we’re going to get it,” she says.

In the afternoon, protestors showed up in west suburban Cicero ,were 31 people were arrested and later charged with a misdemeanor, police said. Workers at both protests came from a variety of fast food restaurants and Nancy Salgado, a McDonald’s worker for 12 years, says she attended both rallies to add her voice to what she says is a growing chorus of “thousands and thousands of workers” nationally.

“We are working for a multi-billion dollar company that, year by year, they always make money and we are still living on poverty wages,” she said. “We are just asking for a little bit of that money coming in because of all the hard work that we do.”

McDonald’s, whose headquarters are in Chicago, criticised the rallies and claimed that “some participants are being paid, up to $500, to protest and get arrested.” The company said it believes that “any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners of small and medium-sized businesses — like the ones who won and operate the majority of our restaurants — is manageable.

The National Restaurant Association, the largest trade body representing the industry, dismissed the strike actions as a PR stunt, saying it was a “multi-million dollar campaign” funded by unions. “The activities have proven to be orchestrated union PR events where the vast majority of participants are activists and paid demonstrators. This is nothing more than labor groups’ self-interested attempts to boost their dwindling membership by targeting restaurant employees,” the NRA said in a statement.

Obama has been pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 but has faced stiff opposition from Republican opponents and business lobby groups who argue a wage hike would kill job creation.

Speaking at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee on Monday, Obama said: “If I were busting my butt in the service industry and wanted an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, I’d join a union ... I’d want a union looking out for me and if I cared about these things I’d also want more Democrats looking out for me.”