And rest up, because we have the fight of our lives ahead in 2016.

This has been some year. I can’t remember a time when so many 1199ers have been so active in so many arenas on behalf of our families and our communities. We all have good reason to feel proud.

From our upstate New York members along the Canadian border to our sisters and brothers in southern Florida, we’ve marched for justice alongside our Black Lives Matter partners. Our actions on behalf of climate justice were part of the great wave that helped President Obama cancel the XL Pipeline; otherwise, it would have brought the dirtiest tar sands oil into the heartland of our country. And of course—whether in Maryland or New Jersey or Massachusetts—we led the fight to save our hospitals, to secure and enforce our contracts and protect our jobs and quality care for our patients.

Perhaps no achievement is greater than our Fight For $15 to raise the minimum wage for low-income workers. What started a couple of years ago as a campaign of fast-food workers began to produce pledges from elected officials to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, maybe even $12 an hour, maybe not this year but gradually over the next six or eight years.

But those pledges were insufficient in one of the wealthiest countries on earth. So the “Fight For $15” emerged and exploded way beyond fast-food workers. Healthcare workers provide a more essential service than fast-food workers, and certainly a healthier one. Yet millions of healthcare workers— including tens of thousands of our members, especially homecare workers—earn poverty-level wages. This is a disgrace that we are determined to end.

1199 set the standard when last year our sisters and brothers at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore won a $15 an hour minimum for veteran workers. And this year in a landmark agreement, our 36,000 Massachusetts personal care attendants secured a $15 an hour minimum—the first homecare workers in the country to do so. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just gave state workers the $15 minimum and pledged to fight for it for all New York workers. So this is the new 1199SEIU standard and nothing less will do.

We have our work cut out for us in the 2016 national elections—not just for President—for every member of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate and the members of most state legislatures. Best get ready to bring the Fight For $15 into the electoral arena. And not just the Fight For $15. It is an article of faith among the Republican candidates that the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, should be abolished, which would take away health care from 17 million newly insured Americans. Add to this their attacks on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. None of the Republican candidates want to raise the federal minimum wage above its current scandalously low $7.25 an hour; some want to abolish minimum wages altogether.

Their stances on immigrant workers range from deportation of 11 million folks, to building walls along the Mexican and Canadian borders, to using armed drones to patrol the borders. Each candidate is more vulgar than the next as they disparage women, people of color, people of faiths other than their own, gays and other minorities. They don’t even make a pretense of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” You can picture what kind of country they want us to live in.

We 1199 members cannot under any circumstances let anti-worker politicians gain control of the White House, in addition to the Senate, Congress and the Supreme Court. That consolidation of power by the extreme right-wing would be disastrous. Last month, the SEIU Executive Board voted to endorse Hillary Clinton for President. We 1199ers admire and respect Sen. Bernie Sanders, and applaud his message of fairness and economic justice. But we must above all prevent a Republican victory next year.

We believe Sec. Clinton has the most effective strategy to win the Presidency. All of us, whatever our political affiliation, faith, gender, color, sexual orientation or national origin, have to remain united, and join with our partners in the labor movement and in our communities. Solidarity is required to successfully defend our families against those who would eliminate our hard- won gains and union protections. They also want to strip essential funding for our healthcare system, destroy our public schools, militarize our police, poison our air and our water, and force our immigrant sisters and brothers into the shadows. All that is on the table in next year’s elections. We know that we can count on you to do your part.

In the meantime, we wish you and your loved ones happy and peaceful holidays. Please rest up. We face the fight of our lives in the New Year