
David Rolf
@davidmrolf
Seattle labor leader and organizer. Author, The Fight for Fifteen. @SEIU775 Founder+President Emeritus. cofounder @workingwa, @fairworkcenter @theworkerslab
ID: 386135734
http://davidmrolf.com/ 06-10-2011 18:36:20
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I was part of the committee that drafted the $15 minimum wage compromise 10 years ago. I agree with my good friend David Rolf: a deal is a deal. Seattle restaurants have had a decade to plan for this.

David Rolf If they can’t figure out how to pay a fair wage in 10 years, then they need to be in a different line of work. Lots of restaurants have figured this out. We shouldn’t reward the handful of business owners who want to pay substandard wages.

David Rolf This debate was settled in 2014 with Seattle's historic minimum wage agreement, and countless cities and states have followed our lead. Any effort to roll back the most popular thing the city has done in this century is destined to be an ugly, expensive, embarrassing failure.

David Rolf When you pay people more, they spend more locally, and our economy grows. For 10 years these businesses have profited from that booming growth. It’s time for them to pony up or pack it up.

A deal is a deal. The Seattle min wage law, negotiated by a 24-person city commission, recommended by a 21-2 vote, passed unanimously the Seattle City Council, signed by the Mayor, allowed small local restaurants a TEN YEAR phase-in period.


Michigan supreme court strikes down tipped-worker penalties while the big-biz Seattle City Council tries to make Seattle the only west coast jurisdiction to impose them Joy Hollingsworth Working Washington SEIU 775 ufcw3000 MLK Labor Teamsters 117 Tammy J. Morales

I’ll just leave this here for the Seattle City Council Working Washington SEIU 775 ufcw3000 Teamsters 117 MLK Labor fox13seattle.com/news/earn-live…

NEW: Cherry Street Coffee House owner complained to City Council that paying minimum wage may force him to close stores. Outraged, the workers shut down one of his stores anyway. Business may have power in City Hall, but workers still run the workplace. thestranger.com/news/2024/08/2…

CEO Tim O'Reilly: “As labor organizer David Rolf said to me, “God did not make being an auto worker a good job!” Those middle class jobs that we look back at with such nostalgia were the result of a fierce competition between companies and labor as to who would set the rules of


In 2013, progressive SEIU union leader David Rolf, one of the most innovative and strategic thinkers in organized labor, sparked the $15 min wage movement that spread across big blue cities by running and winning - by 77 votes - a then quite radical ballot measure in Seatac, a
