UPDATE: June 4, 2025: This article has been updated with comments from One Fair Wage, a group that advocates for ending the tipped sub-minimum wage.
One Fair Wage, which backed Initiative 82, decried the vote to delay the wage hike in a press release, calling it “a betrayal of working people and a dangerous precedent in a city that has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to economic and racial justice.”
OFW’s president, Saru Jayaraman, said weakening or repealing I-82 could have political costs for city council members. “Elected officials who choose to disregard the will of their constituents should be prepared to face the consequences at the ballot box. The workers we’ve met with have told us that DC deserves representatives who respect their votes and prioritize the their needs over corporate interests,” Jayaraman wrote.
Dive Brief:
- The city council of Washington, D.C., voted Tuesday to suspend a $2 hourly wage increase for tipped workers scheduled to take effect on July 1, according to a press release from the Restaurant Association of Metro Washington.
- The suspension was an emergency measure and came after Mayor Muriel Bowser asked council members to repeal Initiative 82, a voter-approved ballot measure that was set to gradually eliminate the tipped minimum wage in the District.
- The council vote means that tipped restaurant workers will not see an increase in base pay from $10 to $12. While the vote does not ensure the repeal of I-82 later this year, it is a likely indicator.
Dive Insight:
RAMW said the suspension of the wage hike “creates a powerful opportunity for us to look carefully at the data and listen to even more of our workers.”
Opponents of I-82 have claimed the measure, which began raising wages in May 2023, has prompted restaurant closures and job losses. But the data about I-82’s impact is clear: macroeconomic evidence shows that there is not a labor crisis in D.C.’s restaurant sector. The job losses forecast by opponents of I-82 have not come to pass, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Full-service restaurant employment in the District reached 31,200 workers in April, the highest level on record, topping pre-pandemic totals and surpassing June 2024’s previous peak.
Research by the councils’ Office of the Budget Director — produced before the latest BLS report — also contradicts the notion that I-82 is responsible for a crisis in employment or in growth. Full-service restaurant employment, the report found, reached pre-pandemic levels in mid-2023. By contrast, the District’s limited-service restaurant workforce and overall workforce, both lag pre-COVID-19 levels.
“Since the start of the tipped minimum wage increases in May 2023, food services and drinking places employment in the District has grown by 4%, mostly driven by full-service and special food services employment. This outpaces the employment growth in Maryland, Virginia, and the United States as a whole,” the report said.
The number of workers per establishment has fallen, but this is in line with pre-pandemic trends and was offset by increasing numbers of full-service restaurants. The OBD research did not determine a causal link between I-82 and slow decreases in per-restaurant employment.
Opponents of I-82, including the Employment Policies Institute — not to be confused with the older and pro I-82 Economic Policy Institute — have claimed BLS data for restaurants and bars show that I-82 led to an $11.8 million decrease in pay for restaurant workers from May 2023 to September 2024.
This is due to the frame of reference selected in BLS data: comparing May 2023 to September 2024 shows a decrease. But a year-over-year comparison of Q2 2023 to Q2 2024 shows a more than $6.2 million increase in worker compensation, while comparing Q3 2023 to Q3 2024 shows an increase of $2.7 million in quarterly worker earnings. Year-over-year comparisons are more appropriate for a highly-seasonal industry like restaurants.
If the D.C. council proceeds to repeal I-82, it will be the second time in seven years that the city’s government has repealed voter-supported measures to eliminate the tip credit. In 2018, Initiative 77, which would have eliminated the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, passed with 55% of the vote and repealed in October of that year; in 2022, Initiative 82 passed with 74% of the vote, public records show.
RAMW thanked eight council members — Phil Mendelson, Kenyan McDuffie, Anita Bonds, Robert White, Charles Allen, Wendell Felder, Christina Henderson and Brooke Pinto — for supporting the bill.
