Protesters in more than 100 US cities conduct sit-ins and marches outside restaurants to call for a $15 minimum wage Protesters demanding higher wages and unionization for 
fast food workers march on Thursday in New York.Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
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.