Although it's not on anyone's list of places to walk, the noisy neighborhood of South Lander Street in Seattle is an interesting place to see issues shaping our state's business climate.

Walk carefully, or you might get nicked by a delivery truck on potholed roads (transportation infrastructure) or by a train slowed through a congested intersection (freight mobility). Go east and you reach headquarters of the Seattle Public Schools (workforce training and competitiveness). Go west and you stop at the Starbucks headquarters (globalization). Go farther west and you reach the waterfront, where you get a view of the cruise ship terminal (tourism) and Harbor Island (container shipping). For lunch, I'd cross the street and try the pork sandwich at Jones Barbeque (hunger management).

Though it's easy to overlook, you should also stop at a drab office strip that is headquarters to one of the most dynamic and controversial labor leaders in Washington, David Rolf of Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union. Using a combination of what others have called finesse and force, Rolf has built his organization of office janitors, health care workers and others into the largest local in Washington and a powerful presence in Olympia. SEIU and affiliates in Washington represent about 100,000 people, including 28,000 home-care workers and about 1,500 nursing-home workers at 17 facilities.

Union membership nationally has declined from more than a third of the workforce in 1955 to 12 percent today. Rolf is trying to reverse those numbers. He's already doubled his local's membership in five years.

Lean and intense, Rolf, 37, is whip smart, brash and blunt. In conversation, he talks about his trips to Japan and Australia to meet union members and share ideas for health care and organizational management. He offers a detailed analysis of industrial policy. He says new tools, such as a call center and text messages sent to cell phones, will allow improved communications with members. A native of Cincinnati who attended Bard College, he pulls out a book by the Ideo global design firm - the same one used by Apple Computer - and talks about how he's working to transform "the experience" of being a union member. This isn't your father's union leader.

In 2005, SEIU's national leaders and others roiled the labor movement by breaking from the national AFL-CIO and forming the Change to Win Coalition - and change is a word Rolf uses often. He considers the traditional union movement outmoded and dying, a captive along with management in a posture of conflict. He wants to break from thinking that dates back to the 1930s and the Wagner Act, which established the National Labor Relations Board. He pushes new strategies and new tactics. Once in a while, his union will support a friendly Republican who has been targeted for defeat by other unions.

"He's a pretty sharp guy," says Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business. But Brunell calls SEIU's tactics "brutal" and cites the union's failed attempt in 2004 to oust Rep. Helen Sommers, a Democrat who did not support raises for health care workers.

Rolf was back in the news in March when the Seattle Times disclosed details of an agreement he struck with nursing-home operators. The two sides agreed to work together in Olympia to secure $60 million in increased Medicaid funding in exchange for support for the union's organizing effort. Rolf says the agreement is similar to arrangements by which Boeing and machinists lobbied for support for the 787 program and construction companies and building-trades unions reached agreement on job training and hiring.