Thousands of McDonald's employees and union activists descended on the company's headquarters near Chicago on Thursday to hold the biggest ever protest against "poverty wages" paid to most of its 400,000 employees, as the company's board gathered for its annual shareholder meeting.

About 5,000 McDonald's employees from across the US chanted: "We work, we sweat, put $15 in our cheque" as they marched towards the burger giant's headquarters holding banners reading "McDonald's: $15 and Union Rights, Not Food Stamps."

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"We're here to tell McDonald's and its shareholders to invest in the company and its workers instead of wealthy hedge fund managers and executives," said Kwanza Brooks, a McDonald's worker and mother of three from Charlotte, North Carolina, who is paid $7.25 an hour. "We're tired of relying on food stamps to feed our own families. We need $15 and the right to form a union and we need it now."

Ahead of the meeting McDonald's dismissed the demonstrations as a publicity campaign by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is working to organize workers across the fast-food industry.

"The union has spent its members' dues money in the past two years attacking the McDonald's brand...in an unsuccessful attempt to unionize workers," the company said in a statement.

Many of the protesters arrived on Wednesday and held a rally outside McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, a suburb about 20 miles west of Chicago. On stage, Adriana Alvarez, one of 101 McDonald's workers arrested for protesting at the meeting last year, said: "We're here to make it clear to McDonald's that we want $15 and union rights. We don't need food stamps, and we definitely don't want buybacks [in which the company buys its own shares to benefit shareholders]."

Alvarez, who has worked at McDonald's for five years, said she is paid so little that she needs food stamps and Medicaid to care for her three-year-old son, Manny.

The company, which has taken the highly unusual step of banning the media from the meeting, on Wednesday closed many of its corporate offices and its on-site restaurant and removed "Golden Arches" flags from its properties.