David Rolf
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Articles by David Rolf
UNDRIP Action Plan Addresses Indigenous Self-Government
On June 21, 2023, the Government of Canada released its long-awaited United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRIP) Action Plan. The Action Plan is part of Canada's commitment to implement the principles of UNDRIP in Canadian law. This blog will discuss the sections of the Action Plan on Indigenous self-government.
We Were All Exhausted: On the Natural Alliance between Football
It was the spring semester of 2011 — the end of my first year in a full-time but non-tenure-line faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. It was 8:00 a.m., and I was walking into my first of two two-hour classes for that day. We were in week eleven of a 15-week semester, and, although the Minnesota winter was finally breaking and the sun shone brightly that morning, neither myself nor any of my forty-odd students wanted to be in class so early.
Economic and Political Bargaining Both Depend on Trust
Dear Oren, I agree: the real question is what forms of labor law and worker organization make desirable economic outcomes more likely. The real question is not whether workers will organize. Of course they will – as will businesses, congregations, sports leagues, political parties, etc. – humans are social animals and require cooperation to solve complex problems.
With Labor Power Will Come Labor Responsibility
Dear Oren, You actually make the argument for sectoral bargaining quite convincingly! Let me take your points one by one and add some thoughts of my own. The Case for Sectoral Bargaining Maintaining competitive balance.
The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%-And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure
Like many of the virus’s hardest hit victims, the United States went into the COVID-19 pandemic wracked by preexisting conditions. A fraying public health infrastructure, inadequate medical supplies, an employer-based health insurance system perversely unsuited to the moment—these and other afflictions are surely contributing to the death toll. But in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic—and its cruelly uneven impact—the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality.
Would Sectoral Bargaining Provide a Better Framework for American Labor Law?
Labor leader David Rolf and American Compass’s Oren Cass discuss the potential for sectoral bargaining in America. Most Americans take for granted that our enterprise-based system of organized labor is simply the way collective bargaining works: employees at a worksite vote on whether to unionize; if the union wins, it bargains with the employer.
The Wagner Act's Original Sin
Dear Oren, Thanks for the invitation to converse on what’s wrong with American labor law, how to fix it, and the potential for sectoral bargaining in particular.
Washington State Forges a Path to Recovery and Prosperity
Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash As people start returning to work in greater numbers, the question of how to boost and sustain economic recovery will come more sharply into relief. For the answer, we should look to how states like Washington have been laying the ground for resiliency and prosperity over the last several years. This crisis is hitting Americans across the nation hard, but some states, including mine, will have a head start on recovering. One key to resiliency is better pay.
To Reboot America, Reboot the Power of Hard-Working Americans
Working Americans were in trouble before COVID Before anyone had heard the term “COVID-19,” working America was already in a crisis. Despite a growing economy in the years preceding COVID-19 — with expanding corporate profit margins, soaring capital markets, record-low unemployment, rising levels of educational attainment and (intermittently) rising productivity – real wages for many hard-working Americans had largely been flat for a generation.
Better Wages, Better Workers
The debate over minimum wage has been a long one in America’s recent history. Many employees cannot live on the salary afforded to them by their companies. So, now, more and more voices rise up, clamoring to be compensated more fairly for the work that they do.
Amazon vs. the parasite economy: The internet giant does right by its workers
Amazon has smartly chosen to lead the way into the real economy, where we solve the problems, build the things, and pay the wages that truly make America great. When politicians of both parties promise to attract “good jobs” to their districts, they’re talking about the kind of real-economy jobs that pay a dignified wage—jobs that provide the income, benefits, and security necessary to build a thriving middle class.
The Black Car Fund is an important model for how portable benefits could work
More than one in every ten American workers—15.5 million people—rely on on-call, temp-agency, contract-firm jobs or independent contracting for their main job in the US, which is more people than work in manufacturing.
‘Learn, Lead, and Leave’ - Why our Local Union opted for Officer Term Limits
In 2002, I became the founding president of SEIU 775, the union for home care and nursing home workers in Washington State and Montana. Having started organizing right out of college in 1992, it had been an incredible privilege to lead two historic union organizing victories early in my career — the campaign to win union recognition for 74,000 Los Angeles home care aides in 1999, and 25,000 Washington home care aides in 2002.
A Roadmap to Rebuilding Worker Power
Over the past forty years, the United States has faced growing inequality, poverty, and economic insecurity. The consolidation of wealth and increasing corporate influence over government has created a dysfunctional democracy and economy in which workers have little economic or political power, and in which few if any civic, governmental, or private institutions remain capable of holding the power of concentrated wealth in check.
A conservative and a liberal agree: Unions must change after Supreme Court blow on Janus
After Supreme Court Janus ruling, labor shouldn't give up hope. But it should consider ideas like works councils, trade associations or an AARP for workers. America’s unions suffered a major loss lat week when the Supreme Court ruled public employee unions could not collect fees from non-members to underwrite collective bargaining. Indeed, it’s not an exaggeration to say that, after the court’s decision in Janus vs. AFSCME, organized labor should rethink its strategies, structures and models.
Savage Love Letter of the Day: Reader Advice Round-up - Slog - The Stranger
Recent Savage Love Letters of the Day: She's going to cheat on her husband, but what if she gets herpes? His cousin has really sexy feet, but should he massage them? Should he let his potential boyfriend mock his cock? And what would you do!? Also: last week's column and Savage Lovecast. Hello MISSCLEO! Just for context: I am now 36 and like your son very curious about sex as a young teen.
What if We Treated Labor Like a Startup?
David Rolf is president of SEIU 775NW, the fastest-growing union in the Northwest. In 2011, the Occupy movement transformed the national discourse concerning inequality and corporate power. This year, a historic $15 minimum wage was passed in Seattle, and similar increases are on the legislative docket in Chicago and San Francisco. Fast-food workers have been striking nationwide for better pay. And a progressive mayor now leads the largest city in the United States.
Don’t believe falsehoods about $15 wage
True or false: A $15 minimum wage will result in businesses laying off their workers and closing their doors? We’ve heard and read these assertions so many times – including in these pages – that it’s hard to believe they are false. How could so many people possibly be so wrong, for so long? Because trickle-down economics has been our national religion for 40 years, and we are still waking up to the reality that these policies have been a sham.
A New Social Contract
Editor’s Note: This Forum is available as our spring 2017 print issue. We are pleased to make it freely available online thanks to the generous support of the Cameron Schrier Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Let market drive use of electric cars
Let market drive use of electric cars By David H. Rolf Posted on April 26, 2017 12:05 am Updated on April 25, 2017 at 5:28 pm There are about 5,000 electric vehicles on Hawaii’s roadways. This number is one-half of 1 percent of the approximately 1 million light vehicle passenger cars and trucks operating in Hawaii in 2017. Read More
At Labor’s Crossroads
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the most important union in the country and one of the largest, is a pretty big deal, but it would be an even bigger deal if the American labor movement were not itself in such a tenuous state.
Portable Benefits for an Insecure Workforce
This article appears in the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. Imagine an entirely new system of employment benefits—a system that substantially closes the gap left by the ongoing decline of secure full-time employment while uniting business and labor, tech companies and small businesses, progressives and libertarians. You would sense you were on to something, right?
Guest Post: Trump, Sunk Cost Fallacies, and the Next Labor Movement | ON LABOR on WordPress.com
David Rolf has led some of the largest union organizing campaigns since the 1940s. He is President of SEIU 775, The Workers Lab, Working Washington, and the Fair Work Center; International Vice President of SEIU; and the author of “The Fight for Fifteen” (New Press, 2016). Views expressed here are his own. This post is part of a series on Labor in the Trump Years.
Column: The labor movement as we know it is dying. Here’s how it can survive
Editor’s Note: David Rolf is the president of SEIU 775 and the author of “The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America.” Known as an innovative organizer, Rolf led the successful $15 minimum wage campaigns in both SeaTac, Washington, home to Seattle’s airport, and Seattle. Making Sen$e spoke with Rolf about the challenges the labor movement is facing today, the future of labor and the need for new bargaining models. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Column: The labor movement as we know it is dying. Here’s how it can survive
Editor’s Note: David Rolf is the president of SEIU 775 and the author of “The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America.” Known as an innovative organizer, Rolf led the successful $15 minimum wage campaigns in both SeaTac, Washington, home to Seattle’s airport, and Seattle. Making Sen$e spokes with Rolf about the challenges the labor movement is facing today, the future of labor and the need for new bargaining models. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Seattle’s neighborhood councils have raised selfishness to an art form
We should not use taxpayer money to support Seattle neighborhood councils that have an agenda excluding renters, people of color, the young, the poor and those who need social services from their neighborhoods. YEARS ago, a former Seattle mayor asked if I had any advice for him as he drafted his budget proposal. While flattered, I told him I had no knowledge of how much it costs to run a fire department or where to look for savings in transportation or public utilities.
How the $15 Minimum Wage Became a Reality in Seattle
Fast food workers strike for higher minimum wage and better benefits in St. Paul, Minnesota, on April 14, 2016. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue) The battle for a higher minimum wage, led primarily by fast food workers, has become one of the biggest labor stories in the United States in decades. A new book from one of the organizers involved in that struggle shows how victories were won and makes the case that higher wages can revitalize the US economy.
Don’t believe falsehoods about $15 wage
Don’t believe falsehoods about $15 wage Araya’s Place, a vegan Thai restaurant in an upscale Seattle neighborhood that the city had ordered to pay nearly $6,500 in back wages plus fines totaling more than $3,000, is open for lunch in March. True or false: A $15 minimum wage will result in businesses laying off their workers and closing their doors? We’ve heard and read these assertions so many times – including in these pages – that it’s hard to believe they are false.
Oximity
This article appears in the Spring 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, unions and collective bargaining helped to power the creation of America’s vast middle class. Unions smoothed the distribution of wealth over the entire economy, constraining the percentage of wealth and income concentrated at the top of the economy while lifting up the bottom and the middle.
Toward a 21st-Century Labor Movement
This article appears in the Spring 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, unions and collective bargaining helped to power the creation of America’s vast middle class. Unions smoothed the distribution of wealth over the entire economy, constraining the percentage of wealth and income concentrated at the top of the economy while lifting up the bottom and the middle.
A $15 Minimum Wage Is What We Need - and Here's Why the Attacks on It Are Bogus
A $15 Minimum Wage Is What We Need - and Here's Why the Attacks on It Are Bogus The following is an excerpt from the new book The Fight for Fifteen by David Rolf (The New Press, 2016): Throughout a century of public debate, business lobbyists, trade associations, and the economic right have portrayed minimum wages as harmful to business. The criticisms raised by minimum-wage opponents display a remarkable consistency over the past hundred years, despite huge changes in our economy.
The Fight for Fifteen
The fight for a higher minimum wage has become the biggest national labor story in decades. Beginning in November 2012, strikes by fast food workers spread across the country, landing in Seattle in May 2013. Within a year, Seattle had adopted a $15 minimum wage—the highest in the United States—without a bloody political battle.
Does Labor Deserve Its Own Downfall?
Should the Supreme Court rule for the plaintiff in Friedrichs v.
Uber Drivers: You Bet They’re Employees
The California ruling that an Uber driver is an employee should start a push toward modernizing the social safety net for the new economy. The recent ruling by the California Labor Commission that San Francisco Uber driver Barbara Ann Berwick is not a contractor but an employee is seismic. For years now, Uber has successfully fended off such efforts, arguing, “Hey, we’re just an app.” We admire the innovative spirit that Uber represents and use the service ourselves often.
Shared Security, Shared Growth
The American middle class is facing an existential crisis. For more than three decades, declining wages, fraying benefits, and the rising costs of education, housing, and other essentials have stressed and squeezed middle-class Americans. But by far the biggest threat to middle-class workers—and to our economy as a whole—comes from the changing nature of employment itself.
Shared Security, Shared Growth
Features Our changing economy has given rise to a nation of freelancers and contractors—and the need for a twenty-first-century social contract. By Nick Hanauer David Rolf from Summer 2015, No. 37 – 30 MIN READ Tagged EconomicsMiddle ClassSocial Security The American middle class is facing an existential crisis. For more than three decades, declining wages, fraying benefits, and the rising costs of education, housing, and other essentials have stressed and squeezed middle-class Americans.
Labor: Building a New Future
The world in which America’s unions grew and thrived is gone. The economic and political environment that once supported unions has largely disappeared. For a variety of reasons, most unions have not evolved or adapted. Within our lifetimes, many of America’s existing unions will likely perish or recede into irrelevance. Despite a five-decade decline in union density, unions have continued to pursue the same organizing activities and strategies that they’ve used since the 1930s.
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