[1] 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.

[2] 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.

[6][7] 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.

Rolf's maternal grandfather, described as "hardscrabble",[6] worked at a General Motors plant and was a member of United Automobile Workers (UAW) who picketed on several occasions.

[7] 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.

[7] Beginning in 1995 in his role as "deputy general manager" for Local 434-B,[11] Rolf partnered with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in an attempt to organize home care workers.

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.

[44] The school was created and sponsored by a labor-management partnership with input from healthcare purchasers and systems, home care providers, SEIU, and the State of Washington.

[6] 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.

[6] 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,[32] which addresses minimum wage and other social issues.

[6][33] 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.

"[37] He has written extensively about the need for unions to innovate in order to maintain relevance in the 21st Century, including co-authoring an op-ed with Eli Lehrer of the libertarian R Street Institute in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in Janus v.

[40] Rolf is working with entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer on an unnamed project to rebuild the middle class in the United States.

Hanauer and Rolf support a "portable benefits" system in which workers are assigned "individual security accounts" into which employers contribute "safety-net fees" relative to the number of hours an employee works.

In January 2018, Rolf co-authored an open letter with Hanauer and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi urging business, labor, and government leaders to commit to developing a flexible, proportional, and universal system of worker benefits.

[46] In a December 2016 post on Medium, Rolf announced that he was a founding signatory to the Economic Security Project, a new group that intends to research a basic income system.

In the Medium post, Rolf wrote that "the labor movement’s job has always been to ensure that workers get a fair slice of the economic pie" and that "a basic income is an end-run around the failings of modern economies to provide a decent life for their citizens.

The Fair Work Center is a Seattle-based hub that assists in enforcing labor law and helps workers understand and exercise their legal rights.

Working Washington is a Seattle-based fast-food workers nonprofit advocacy group composed of civil rights and immigrant activists, labor advocates, neighborhood associations, and religions leaders.

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.

[55][7] 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.

[6][7] According to The Seattle Times, he succeeded in growing SEIU 775 with a "tell it like it is" personality,[7] 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".