Nick Hanauer and David Rolf are an unlikely pair of troublemakers. Hanauer is a Seattle venture capitalist and was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com. David Rolf is a labor organizer who once rallied enough support to unionize 74,000 home healthcare workers in Los Angeles.
Yet the two agree on one thing: We need to pay part-time workers better and provide better benefits. And they've teamed up to start a campaign to make that happen.
Their argument could slash the profitability (or future profitability) of many tech start-ups. But it might also ensure the continued existence of a robust middle class, even in an era in which most of us work part time or contract jobs for companies like Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit.