Thousands of fast-food workers, home care and child care providers, janitors, airport workers and Uber drivers rallied in 340 cities across the United States Tuesday for a national day of action to demand a minimum wage of $15 a hour. In New York City, about two dozen people were arrested. This is Héctor Figueroa, president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union.

Héctor Figueroa: “After the outcome of this last election, it’s even more important that we raise our voices and we fight for our rights. It was economic. It was the rising income inequality that is striking hard on workers, that led to a very, very complicated election. And unless we address this problem, we are going to see our country suffer. So we’re here to say the time to give workers a raise is now, the time to win a union in the workplace is now, and we’re not going to stop until we win 15 and a union.”