Fast-food workers calling for $15 an hour are picking up some more allies Wednesday.
Airport workers, home care workers, Walmart workers and adjunct professors are among those set to join in the Fight for $15 protests across the country, in what organizers are calling the biggest ever mobilization of workers in the U.S.
The campaign is being spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union and began in late 2012. On Wednesday, organizers say protests for higher pay and union for low-wage workers are planned for more than 230 U.S. cities and college campuses, as well as dozens of cities overseas.
In Jackson, Mississippi, around 30 people demonstrated in a McDonald's before being kicked out; organizers said about half of them were McDonald's workers. One of the lead demonstrators was arrested for trespassing and police said the store manager said he plans to press charges.
Earlier in the morning, protesters rallied outside a McDonald's in New York City and were planning more demonstrations throughout the day.
The demonstrations got an early start Tuesday afternoon in Boston, where several hundred people including college students, low-wage workers and their supporters gathered for a rally. In Detroit, protesters gathered in the evening inside a McDonald's, and organizers say three employees walked off the job as part of the protests.
Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fight for $15, said McDonald's remains a focus of the protests and that the company's recently announced pay bump shows fast-food workers already have a de facto union.
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