In a packed hearing that ran into the late evening, Washington, D.C.’s city council debated Monday whether to repeal a recently-passed ballot initiative to raise the tipped minimum wage. Initiative 77, passed in June by voters, would raise the tipped minimum wage of less than $4 per hour to match the non-tipped minimum wage by 2026. It set off a firestorm of opposition by the restaurant industry and its tipped workers.
Seven of the 13 members of the city council supported a bill in July to overturn the public’s vote and repeal Initiative 77, despite the fact that the initiative passed in all but one of the city’s eight wards. The repeal was the subject of Monday’s hearing.
In his opening statement at the hearing, council chairman Phil Mendelson said the ballot initiative language was “misleading at best, dishonest at worst,” providing “a false promise” of addressing chronic issues of pay inequity and harassment in the restaurant industry. “Employers who exploit employees will do so regardless” of the law, he said.
Over 250 people signed up to testify at the hearing, most of whom work as servers, bartenders, and restaurant owners in the District. The majority of witnesses supported the repeal of Initiative 77, arguing that the ballot initiative would not solve the industry’s equity issues and would threaten the livelihoods of middle-class workers struggling to survive in an expensive city.
“We are not children. We don’t need saving,” said Symone Wilson, a server at DC9 nightclub, pushing back on the notion that restaurant workers are testifying against their best interests. “We are rational actors making an economically sound decision that makes sense in our lives,” said Valerie Graham, a bartender in the District who supports repealing the initiative.
Initiative 77 passed with 55 percent of the vote during the District’s primary on June 19. The campaign for the ballot initiative was supported by the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a New York-based restaurant worker advocacy organization.
Many workers at the hearing expressed anger that an advocacy group with its roots outside D.C. has played such a large role in shaping public debate around District wages. “The council is our last hope at being protected from becoming another notch in the ROC’s belt,” said Sheena Wills, a bartender at DC9. ROC has ongoing campaigns in several states to raise the tipped minimum wage.
The current tipped minimum wage in the District is $3.89 per hour, and employers are required to compensate employees to the minimum wage of $13.25 if tips don’t make up the difference. But supporters of Initiative 77 argue that the current law is not adequately enforced to protect workers from wage theft and discrimination.
Supporters of Initiative 77, like One Fair Wage coalition liaison Erika Taylor, said that “replacing the tipped minimum wage with one fair standard is a matter of equity.” Taylor cited a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute that found that the rate of poverty among tipped workers in the District is 13.7 percent, three times higher than non-tipped workers. Other opponents of the repeal said that they represented a minority of the testimonies because fellow opponents were afraid to come forward. Thea Bryan, a bartender, spoke to receiving “endless harassment” for speaking out in favor of Initiative 77.
But supporters of repealing Initiative 77 emphasized that raising the tipped minimum wage could raise expenses for small business owners, resulting in layoffs or the relocation of restaurants to neighboring Maryland and Virginia, which would ultimately harm workers.
“My life is not a social science project,” said Karim Soumah, a server at the high-end restaurant RIS, who supports repealing the initiative. “I don’t want to be viewed as a statistic but rather as an actual human being.”
And business owners testified that the initiative “will be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back,” said Billy Martin, owner of Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown.
“Money doesn’t come from thin air,” said John Guggenmos, owner of several bars in the District. “In the real world, costs have to be paid for.”
The council and witnesses wrestled with the notion that overriding the public vote would be undemocratic and for the council members, potentially politically unpopular. But supporters of the repeal argued that Initiative 77 is simply not good legislation. “It is my duty to all the residents, all the voters in Ward 5, all those entrepreneurs in Ward 5, to do what I think is right,” said council member Kenyan McDuffie. “And I think the right thing to do here is to repeal a bad law.”
There are currently seven states where tipped and non-tipped workers earn the same minimum wage, including California, Washington, and Oregon.