David Rolf

Early life and education

Rolf was born in 1969 and grew up in Cincinnati. His father, a lawyer, and mother, a unionized teacher with a blue-collar background, held liberal values and taught him to abide by the Golden Rule. His father had pledged to a mostly black fraternity in the early 1960s in support of the civil rights movement, and his mother took him to "U.S. Out of Central America" meetings at her Unitarian church. They also instilled the belief "that everyone is equal and you can be anything you want to be", which Rolf now considers "either the most naive or dishonest thing you can tell a child". He had a comfortable upbringing, once recalling, "We had a brick ranch home and a sandbox in the backyard. We had a station wagon. For vacation, throw the kids in the back seat, stay in the Best Western on the way to Disneyland. It was a sitcom, stereotype life."

He was also influenced by other family members. Rolf's maternal grandfather, described as "hardscrabble", worked at a General Motors plant and was a member of United Automobile Workers (UAW) who picketed on several occasions. He observed the evolution of his paternal grandfather's career, who worked a third-shift job at a Procter & Gamble soap factory in order to pay for law school, eventually becoming a lawyer and local politician. During his formative years, Rolf witnessed inequality and limited economic mobility, and "learned to be angry at injustice".

Rolf attended Bard College in New York, where his political and social ideologies were further developed. He discovered that he "really [agreed]" with the content he would read in The Nation, a left-leaning publication that had been introduced to him by a college girlfriend. Rolf said of his interest in the issues that emerged during his time at college, including AIDS, apartheid and others during the presidency of Ronald Reagan: "About every campus cause you could be involved in during the late '80s and early '90s... I was in."

Early work

While attending college, Rolf interned at a local chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a labor union representing health care workers. He helped the local organize campus janitors. He began his career doing union organizing in Georgia, accepting an entry-level position as an organizer for the Atlanta chapter of SEIU. Though he was initially uncertain about what he wanted to do career-wise, Rolf enjoyed working as an organizer and quickly gained the attention of SEIU leaders.

Los Angeles

Beginning in 1995 in his role as "deputy general manager" for Local 434-B, Rolf worked opposite the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in an attempt to organize home-care workers. Union leaders criticized his forfeiture of the right to strike, an action generally considered to offer the most leverage for procuring concessions from employers. However, Rolf's offer secured concessions such as supplemental training "to improve workers' skills and employability". In 1999, the Board established a public authority and was quickly joined by 74,000 Los Angeles County home-care workers, becoming the largest union drive since autoworkers at Michigan's Ford River Rouge Complex joined UAW 70 years earlier. In an article published by The New York Times, Rolf said: "This campaign represents a new direction for the labor movement. It is a campaign where we reached out to low-income, women workers, workers of color and immigrant workers. If you look at the demographic changes in Southern California, the labor movement has to figure out how to bring these workers in because they are the backbone of the new, low-wage service-sector economy." The Chicago Tribune also published a quote by Rolf in their "Quote of the Day" column. Referring to the vote to unionize county workers, he said it was "Simply one for the history books".

SEIU 775

Rolf later served as president of SEIU Local 6, which represents workers in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Spokane counties. Since 2002, he has served as president of the Seattle-based Local 775 of SEIU, a union of 43,000 members. Established in 2001, the chapter has become one of the largest political voices and the most powerful union in Washington. Before SEIU's formation, home-care workers earned "barely more" than minimum wage and were not able to unionize. After lawmakers denied workers collective bargaining rights, the union invested $1 million on Initiative 775, which was approved by 63% of the voters.

In 2004, SEIU was successful in securing a contract between Washington State and 26,000 health care workers. The House and Senate approved the contact unanimously, which raised wages from $7.18 to $8.93 and also included health insurance benefits and workers' compensation for the first time. This marked the first in a series of contract wins for Local 775 and added benefits for workers in the region. In 2005, when SEIU disaffiliated with the AFL–CIO, Rolf spoke on behalf of labor workers. Referring to the need for unions to evolve in order to remain relevant, and echoing the opinion of then SEIU president Andy Stern, Rolf told The Seattle Times: "If you're told that a company had the same product line and corporate structure in 2005 as it had in 1955, you could probably conclude that the company is failing."

Throughout these campaigns and into the 2006 state elections, Rolf gained attention for threatening to take on established Democrats and endorsing Republicans, at one point saying: "For too long the labor movement has been considered the lap dog of one party rather than the watchdog for both parties. The time has passed where we can allow one party to write us off and the other to take us for granted." Furthermore, he told The Seattle Times in 2006: "Our members do not care about Democrat vs. Republican. It's not the union's role to be a subsidiary of either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party."

In 2008 SEIU 775 sued Governor Chris Gregoire over her budget, claiming it failed to fund wage increases for state home-care workers. An arbitrator had ordered a 47-cents-per-hour wage increase over two years, following failed contract negotiations. The Washington Federation of State Employees had also sued Gregoire, alleging breach of contact for workers. The union clashed with Gregoire again in 2010 when she canceled several collective bargaining agreements and requested that state workers return to negotiations. Rolf claimed that health workers in the state would lose $100 million in overtime and benefits that had been ordered by an arbitrator.

In 2011 Rolf was a guest columnist for The Seattle Times, writing a piece about Washington Initiative 1029 called "Don't delay implementation of I-1029's home-care worker training requirements". In October 2011, SEIU formally endorsed the Occupy movement and Rolf began speaking at Occupy Seattle rallies. In 2012 Rolf was appointed to then Governor-elect Jay Inslee's transition team, helping him to draft a legislative agenda during his time in office. Rolf also serves as international vice president of SEIU.

$15-per-hour minimum wage

In June 2013, Rolf assisted Nick Hanauer in writing an op-ed for Bloomberg Businessweek. The pair successfully advocated to the Democracy Alliance the importance of making a minimum wage increase a central position. Rolf has been credited for helping to pass the November 2013 ballot measure in SeaTac, Washington, known as Proposition 1, which set a $15-per-hour minimum wage for airport and hotel workers. He has also been credited for making a $15-per-hour minimum wage part of Ed Murray's agenda.

Rolf served on Murray's transition team following his successful bid for Mayor of Seattle in 2013, and was named co-chair of the 23-person Income Inequality Advisory Committee, which addresses minimum wage and other social issues. In late December 2013, Murray announced plans to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which he had pledged to do during his election campaign, earning him an endorsement from Local 775 of SEIU. Simultaneously, Rolf was working alongside newly elected Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who had also advocated for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, to bring the issue into the mainstream and attract support for the policy from both Seattle Mayors Michael McGinn and Murray. Both politicians sought to earn the support of Rolf and Local 775 of SEIU in order to bring their agendas to fruition. The Income Inequality Advisory Committee was scheduled to make a recommendation by April 30, 2014, allowing Murray the ability to submit a proposal to City Council by the end of July.

Political positions and public image

Having recognized the declining influence of unions in the United States, Rolf now advocates for change within the labor movement. In 2012, he wrote an article for The American Prospect, in which he said:

We need new strategies that are responsive to a changed work environment and our information and service economy. But too many unions continue to pursue the same strategies, under the same laws that we've followed for the past 80 years. It's time to seed an era of innovation and organizing that comports with our changing economy and can advocate powerfully on behalf of a 21st-century workforce... America's unions and our allies must have the courage to acknowledge that the crisis we face cannot be met with old models and old tools. We must imagine an alternative future, even if we do not yet know what form it will take. We must embrace risk and failure as necessary elements of a long-term strategy for success.

Rolf echoed similar sentiments in a 2013 article for Democracy, writing: "If we invest time, energy, and capital into rigorous research, development, testing, and scaling up of new strategies and organizations that put workers' interests at the heart of our democracy, we can rebuild the American Dream. Now is a time for creativity and courage, risk and experimentation." In 2013, The Seattle Times wrote that Rolf's mission is to persuade the more traditional leaders within the movement "to accept that innovation is your new religion". He advocates for the use of social networking services by unions in order to engage young people, and believes that, like corporations, unions must invest in development, entrepreneurship and research in order to be successful in their efforts. Rolf believes "a completely new and disruptive force" is necessary to help the middle class, which will require "bold moral and economic choices". He criticizes corporations that outsource or subcontract workers on a low-wage, part-time or temporary basis in order to avoid paying for the benefits required for full-time employees. Rolf has expressed concern about increased student loan debt, cost of housing increases that are greater than family income increases, and payroll tax increases during a time of simultaneous corporate tax decreases, and he is critical of trickle-down economics. He advocates for a $15-per-hour minimum wage to help address these issues. Rolf believes that minimum wage increases help local and small businesses.

Rolf has been described as "not your father's union leader", with the appearance of a "gung-ho, young corporate executive". According to The Seattle Times, he succeeded in growing SEIU 775 with a "tell it like it is" personality, using the union's influence to push legislation and bargaining with the Washington State Legislature on issues related to worker's compensation and benefits. He is also known for challenging "insufficiently union-friendly" politicians, including "generally sympathetic Democrats", and for working with academics, business leaders, and "people who've built other successful organizations".

Works