Fightfor15 campaign in New York City, Alec Baldwin weighs in

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The Fight for $15 campaign that began with fast-food workers expanded in size and scope Wednesday to include a range of workers who say their meager pay is a form of economic injustice.

By the thousands they marched, skirting the crossroads of the world.

Thousands of health care workers and janitors and fast food employees who say they are desperate for a raise.

"Sometimes I cry. I don't know where the next dollar's coming from," said Janet Lewis, a protester.

And the so-called #Fightfor15 movement took their rallying cry to the streets of Midtown and to 230 cities and college campuses across the country. Fighting to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. In New York, it's now $8.75.

"Everything is going up except the salaries. It's difficult to live in the City of New York with the salary that people are having," said Virgilio Aran, a protester.

Labor unions started this fight back in 2012, specifically focusing on McDonald's, where protesters stopped in Times Square Wednesday night.

So far, the company has announced a one-dollar increase in wages. And the movement has become mainstream in national politics.

"Hillary Clinton running for president is talking about it, the mayor of New York City is talking about it, Andrew Cuomo is talking about it. Everybody is talking about it and we need to get it done," said Jonathan Westin, NY Communities for Change.

So at the height of rush hour protesters shut down Columbus Circle and marched to Times Square, for the ultimate "Only in New York" moment, there was the actor Alec Baldwin.

He says he agrees workers need a raise, but for their rallies they should pick a different spot.

"Somewhere where they're not going to block the rush hour here in Manhattan at 6 o'clock in the evening. That's a terrible idea. Life in New York is hard enough as it is," Baldwin said. "I know that when the Occupy Wall Street movement did this, the cops beat the hell out of them. Do you see any cops beating these people up now? (Why do you think they're not?) I don't know you tell me. You're a news analyst you tell me!"

Demonstrators laid on the sidewalk to stage a "die-in," which became popular during the "Black Lives Matter" protests after recent police shootings of black men. Several wore hooded sweatshirts that said "I Can't Breathe," a nod to the recent death of a black man in New York City who was put in a police chokehold.

Timothy Roach, a 21-year-old Wendy's worker from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who traveled to New York for the protests, said the police brutality black men face is linked to how they're viewed by employers and the lack of economic opportunity they're given. He said the protests were important to send a message to the people in charge at companies like McDonald's.

"If they don't see that it matters to us, then it won't matter to them," Roach said.

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, although a representative for McDonald's Corp. said its local team found only one participant was a McDonald's worker from the region. One of the demonstrators was arrested for trespassing.

Protesters also gathered outside McDonald's restaurants in cities including Denver and Los Angeles, after demonstrations got off to an early start in Boston and Detroit on Tuesday. In Albany, New York, about 150 people marched and demonstrated outside a McDonald's.

The Fight for $15 campaign is being spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union and began in late 2012. Since then, organizers have used the spotlight to rally workers in a variety of fields, with adjunct professors being the most recent to join in Wednesday.

Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fight for $15 and an SEIU employee, 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.

"It shows the workers are winning," he said.

McDonald's, however, is digging in its heels over a central issue for labor organizers: Whether it has the power to set wages at franchised restaurants.

McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's say they don't control the employment decisions at franchised restaurants. The SEIU wants to change that and hold McDonald's responsible for labor conditions at franchised restaurants in multiple ways, including lawsuits.

In a statement, McDonald's said it respects the right to "peacefully protest" and that its restaurants will remain open Wednesday. In the past, it said only about 10 to 15 McDonald's workers out of about 800,000 have participated.

In a recent column in The Chicago Tribune, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook described the company's pay hike and other perks as "an initial step," and said he wants to transform McDonald's into a "modern, progressive burger company."

But that transformation will have to take place as labor organizers continue rallying public support for low-wage workers. Ahead of the protests this week, a study funded by the SEIU found working families rely on $153 billion in public assistance a year as a result of their low wages.

Last year, more than a dozen states and multiple cities raised their minimum wages, according to the National Employment Law Project. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has also been targeted with protests for higher wages and better treatment for workers, recently announced pay hikes as well.

Robert Reich, former Labor secretary and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said stagnating wages for lower-income workers are helping change negative attitudes about unions.

"People are beginning to wonder if they'd be better off with bargaining power," Reich said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)