Across the country, a movement to abolish the subminimum tipped wage has gained ground. As of 2025, seven states — Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington — have enacted what advocates call “One Fair Wage,” guaranteeing tipped workers the same minimum wage as everyone else, with tips on top — a rejection of a two-tiered wage system that keeps service workers’ lives unpredictable and subordinated to the caprices of bosses and customers. In New York, Illinois, and Arizona, efforts to replicate this model are currently advancing through ballot initiatives and legislation.
But as the push to scrap the tipped minimum wage gains momentum, it is also encountering resistance. In Washington, DC, where voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 82 in 2022 to phase out the tipped minimum wage, under pressure from industry lobbies seeking a repeal of the new law, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced in June that the city would pause its implementation. This week, the DC city council voted to amend the law, slowing down changes and capping eventual increases of the subminimum wage, now to be implemented by 2034, at 75 percent of the full minimum wage. In Chicago, where the city council passed a One Fair Wage ordinance in 2023, a new proposal in the city council (opposed by the pro-labor mayor, Brandon Johnson) would freeze the tipped wage at 68 percent of the full minimum wage.
The justification offered on both cities is identical: that abolishing the tipped wage will devastate independent restaurants and inadvertently hurt workers who already make good money from tips.
The industry’s mouthpieces, including the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) and the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), have launched an aggressive lobbying and media campaign to entrench this narrative. They claim to speak on behalf of restaurant workers, but they are not worker organizations. They are extensions of the…
Auteur: Raeghn Draper
