Fair Worker Center (FWC)

It is a sister organization to Working Washington, an advocacy organization also founded by Rolf that promotes policies favored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). ^{3  2}

Overview

The Fair Work Center is part of a network of organizations in Washington State that advances policies favored by labor unions, especially the Service Employees International Union and its powerful local SEIU 775.  ¹

The 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit FWC and its sister 501(c)(4) advocacy organization Working Washington were both founded by SEIU international vice president and SEIU 775 founding president David Rolf, who has used Seattle as a testing ground for numerous labor union-supported policy campaigns. ⁴

Relationship to Working Washington

The Fair Work Center and Working Washington were both founded by labor union activist David Rolf, who was the founding president of Service Employees International Union Local 775, an international vice president of the SEIU, and one of the architects of the SEIU’s “Fight for $15” campaign to more than double the federal minimum wage.  ²

In 2018, the two organizations announced a “strategic alignment” that would result in them sharing an executive director. ⁵ As of 2025, that executive director is labor and immigration attorney Danielle Alvarado. ³

Alvadaro had been the Fair Work Center’s legal director, and formerly worked in legal roles at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Immigrant Justice Corps, and the Urban Justice Center. ⁶

According to Fair Work Center’s annual Internal Revenue Service reports, Alvarado’s annual compensation ($154,633 in 2023) is entirely paid by the FWC, which receives tax-deductible donations as a 501(c)(3) public charity, even though she is reported to spend 20 hours per week working for each organization. ^{7  8}

Advocacy

The Fair Work Center focuses much of its attention on classes of workers and areas of labor policy that are strategic priorities of the SEIU, including the organizing of home care workers and “gig workers” such as rideshare or food delivery drivers, as well as the raising of minimum wages. ⁹

It played a major role in Seattle’s controversial adoption of one of the nation’s highest minimum wages, which reached $19.97 per hour in 2024. ¹⁰

It was also a key player in the passage of Seattle’s “PayUp” ordinances that forced app-based food delivery companies such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart to add $5 fees to orders to meet new city-imposed compensation standards. ^{11  12} The ordinances were widely blamed for making Seattle the nation’s most expensive market to order food deliveries, resulting in many delivery drivers earning less take-home pay overtime as consumers curtailed their use of expensive services. ^{13  14}

In 2025, the FWC supported a law passed by the Washington Legislature that allows workers and contractors such as rideshare drivers to use their accumulated paid sick leave to prepare for or participate in immigration hearings. ¹⁵

Legal Clinic

In 2016, the Fair Work Center opened a legal clinic in partnership with Seattle University, University of Washington School of Law, and the King County Bar Association, partially funded by a grant from the Legal Foundation of Washington. ¹⁶

The FWC uses the clinic as an organizing tool, where it can identify workers with sympathetic personal stories for use in advocacy and as potential litigants to challenge laws or regulations. ¹⁷ In 2025, the Washington Attorney General’s office announced that it had sued the owner of a chain of four “bikini barista” coffee shops for sexual harassment, retaliation, and wage theft following a referral from Fair Work Center. ¹⁸

The FWC uses litigation as a tactic to challenge state labor laws. In September 2025, its attorneys represented clients in front of the Washington Supreme Court who were suing to overturn a state labor law that exempted live-in care workers – including people receiving compensation from the state for taking care of family members in their own homes — from minimum wage standards. ¹⁹

Funding

The Fair Work Center relies heavily on funding from state, federal, and municipal government agencies, which often comprises roughly half of the organization’s annual funding.  ⁷ It reported direct government grants of $970,599 in 2023; $1,349,688 in 2022; $1,565,294 in 2021; $1,165,019 in 2020; $1,069,323 and $1,165,019 in 2019; and $981,155 in 2018. ⁷

In 2016, the FWC received a $53,836 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct a “needs assessment” on retirement savings behavior among low-wage workers and their employers. ²⁰

The SEIU and SEIU 775 have supported the FWC with grants. SEIU 775 has reported donating $150,000 per year to the FWC since 2020, other than in 2024 when it gave $112,500. ²¹

Between 2020 and 2024, the FWC received four grants totaling $800,000 from the Ford Foundation to support gig worker organizing campaigns in Washington State. ²²

In 2020, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation made a one-time $500,000 grant to support the FWC’s “Raise Wages Now Project.” ²³ That same year, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation also made a one-time $500,000 donation, and a $750,020 donation was made by a donor-advised fund managed by the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund. ^{24  25}

It received $1 million in donations from the Nick and Leslie Hanauer Foundation in both 2019 and 2020. ²⁶

The FWC received a $399,020 grant from the left-wing pass-through funder Tides Center in 2019. ²⁷

Other notable funders have included the Hopewell Fund, ²⁸ the Stolte Family Foundation, ²⁹ the Center for Popular Democracy, ³⁰ the Solidago Foundation, ³¹ the Satterberg Foundation, ³² the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, ³³ the Surdna Foundation, ³⁴ the Seattle Foundation, ³⁵ the National Domestic Workers Alliance,  ³⁶ and the National Employment Law Project.  ³⁷

COVID-19 Grants and Compliance Failures

In 2020 and 2021, the Fair Work Center received massive grants from the Legal Foundation of Washington to make one-time cash payments to immigrants who were not eligible for federal stimulus funds or unemployment benefits, including immigrants who were resident illegally in the country.  ³⁸ The grants were funded by the Washington COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund, which in turn received funding from the federal government’s Coronavirus Relief Fund. ³⁸

These grants rapidly expanded the FWC’s budget from $2.6 million in 2019 to $43.1 million in 2020 and $24 million in 2021, before falling back again to $2.3 million in 2022.  ⁷

An accounting firm performed audits on the FWC’s management of the programs, as required by law. In their report on the 2020 program, the auditors reported finding “material weaknesses” in the FWC’s internal controls over financial reporting, non-compliance material to financial statements, and internal control over major programs. ³⁹ The audit the following year again found material weaknesses in the FWC’s internal control over financial reporting and internal control over major programs, but not the non-compliance material to financial statements noted in the previous year’s audit. ⁴⁰

In one finding, the auditors identified a situation in which the FWC overstated its Coronavirus Relief Fund expenditures by $997,000 in its official Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Funds.  ⁴⁰ Another finding noted that the auditors “could not verify that disbursement transactions were properly reviewed or approved prior to issuance,” because the FWC had not retained the necessary “compliance documents.  ⁴⁰

Despite having received federal grants in the past and traditionally relying on government grants for half or more of its annual budget, the FWC responded that the organization was “not familiar enough with the requirements of the federal grant process” to have had procurement policies in place.  ^{7  20  40} The FWC’s response to the auditors also blamed its prior accounting services provider for some of the identified failures.  ⁴⁰