Employees at McDonald's, the world's largest fast food chain, and other huge chains are planning a strike in the U.S. aimed to garner higher wages and better health care.

The protest, which includes workers from Burger King and Pizza Hut, is the latest move in the debate over increasing wages for fast food employees and other low-level laborers, according to the Guardian.

Workers in many of those fast food restaurants across the U.S. will hold a walkout on Thursday, which is being coordinated by local coalitions and Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, union-backed groups that are seeking a $15-per-hour minimum wage for the 4 million fast food workers in the U.S.

"I intend to do whatever it takes to make this company pay a wage that lets me pay my bills without having to go to the government," said Dana Wittman, a Pizza Hut employee from Kansas City, Missouri. "I don't think that right now these corporations are listening. They think we will just shut up eventually and go away, but they are wrong."

Thursdays walkout will be the seventh strike since fast food employees in New York abandoned their jobs in November 2012. Each walkout since the first has seen more participation, and the debate has reached the White House.

More than 1,300 low-wage laborers met at a Chicago convention in July to coordinate efforts in the minimum-wage battle. The convention was hosted by Service Employees International Union, one of the country's biggest unions.

"Thirteen-hundred workers unanimously adopted a resolution at our convention in July to do whatever it takes to win $15 an hour and union rights, including participating in non-violent, peaceful protests in the tradition of the civil rights movement," said Terrance Wise, a Burger King employee, according to The New York Times.

"On Thursday, we are prepared to take arrests to show our commitment to the growing Fight for $15."