David Rolf

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.

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 sought to reverse injustice.

Rolf attended Bard College in New York, where his political and social ideologies were further developed.

He found he agreed with content published by The Nation, a left-leaning publication that had been introduced to him by a college girlfriend.

Rolf was involved in many causes during his time at college, including apartheid, HIV/AIDS, and others that emerged during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

During his time at Bard College, Rolf interned at a local chapter of SEIU.

He later accepted an entry-level position as an organizer for the Atlanta chapter.

David Rolf (born 1969) is an American labor leader, writer, and speaker.

He was the Founding President of Seattle-based Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents health care workers, and formerly served as international vice president of SEIU.

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.

Beginning in 1995 in his role as "deputy general manager" for Local 434-B, Rolf partnered with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in an attempt to organize home care workers.

He led the home care campaign for the last four years of the 12-year effort, emphasizing direct outreach to educate home care workers on issues important to working people, mobilize them to vote, and encourage them to walk precincts talking with other voters.

To implement these strategies, Rolf led the union's organizing staff into communities they hadn't worked in before, and hired organizers that reflected those areas demographically.

A neighborhood-based group meeting structure was developed for home care workers to share stories, identify common challenges, and activate around the need for collective action.

Rolf noted that through these meetings, home care workers "found out for the first time that they weren't alone."

The local also worked closely with other groups, such as the disability community, around shared interests in a form of coalition-based social unionism.

In 1998, he worked opposite the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to organize home care workers.

The negotiations resulted in the Board establishing a public authority that cleared the way for 74,000 workers to join SEIU Local 434-B.

While attending college, Rolf interned at a local chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a labor union focused on organizing workers in three sectors: health care, including hospital, home care and nursing home workers; local and state government employees; and property services, including janitors, security officers and food service workers.

Rolf helped an SEIU local to organize campus janitors at Bard.

After college, he began 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.

He raised the new local's credibility by taking a lead role on passing Proposition 210, a 1996 California State initiative that raised the minimum wage to $5.75 per hour beginning March 1, 1998.

The local collected more signatures than any other group.

In 1999, Rolf guided the home care campaign to success, as the L.A. Board of Supervisors established a public authority for home care workers who were paid by the state.

In short order, 74,000 Los Angeles County home-care workers joined the public authority, making the L.A. home care victory the largest union drive since autoworkers at Michigan's Ford River Rouge Complex joined the United Auto Workers 70 years earlier.

Referring to the vote to unionize county workers, Rolf said it was "Simply one for the history books".

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 helping to lead the campaign for a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

Following Ed Murray's successful bid for Mayor of Seattle, Rolf served as co-chair of the mayor's Income Inequality Advisory Committee.

Rolf advocates for innovation within the labor union movement, including calling for labor to use its existing resources to reinvent itself by developing organizations that "have economic power to improve lives," that can "scale" to ultimately help millions of workers and that are financially sustainable so they can survive without relying on foundation grants.

Rolf has also recently supported new responses to the rise of contingent and on-demand work, including portable benefits and a basic income.

He is the author of The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America (New Press, 2016) about the movement by low-wage workers to earn a higher minimum wage, and A Roadmap to Rebuilding Worker Power (The Century Foundation, 2018).

Rolf was a founder of the Fair Work Center in Seattle, Working Washington, The Workers Lab in Oakland, and the SEIU 775 Benefits Group.

Rolf stepped down as president of SEIU 775 on September 30, 2018, after publishing a blog post on Medium about the importance of term limits for union officers as a way to encourage innovation in the labor movement.