The latest battle to raise the minimum wage for workers who rely on tips is set to kick off on Wednesday in Chicago with a bill being introduced in the city council that will boost pay – as labor activists herald the potential for “a historic moment” for thousands of restaurant workers.
A step-change is in the air for the city, which has a culinary scene of national renown and is taking advantage of fictional depictions such as Chicago being the setting for the popular TV food drama The Bear, as well acting as host for the annual James Beard Awards.
US cities were hard hit by the coronavirus and many are now working through the resulting shake-up in the restaurant business.
“The industry is facing the worst crisis in its history,” Saru Jayaraman, president of the labor advocacy group One Fair Wage, said, noting the shortage of restaurant workers across the country: “And what is our response? Our response is: this is the most historic frickin’ moment in the United States. This is the moment that could change everything in terms of income inequality and the way the economy works.”
Jayaraman and other members of One Fair Wage vowed at the Netroots progressive conference in Chicago last Friday to continue a legacy of labor wins in the city that stretch back to the 1886 Haymarket Affair, the violent breakup of a workers’ strike in support of an eight-hour work day.
The standard minimum wage in Chicago is $15.80 an hour for employers with 21 or more workers, but only $9.48 an hour for tipped workers, so those employees are expected to make up that gap with tips from patrons. Their employers are required to make up the difference if workers do not receive enough tips, but many restaurants fail to do so.
Critics condemn $9.48 as a “sub-minimum” wage and the battle is on to bring tipped workers’ basic wage up to $15.80, too, with any tips they earn coming on top.
The proposed hike already has the support of the new, progressive Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, and city lawmaker Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who rose from being primarily known as a progressive insurgent to the mayor’s powerful floor leader in the council. Johnson served food and drinks for an hour at Netroots in an effort to promote the wage hike.
Ramirez-Rosa and fellow city lawmaker Jessie Fuentes are spearheading the legislation in the council.
“It’s not a question of if but how we’re going to get one fair wage,” Ramirez-Rosa told the Block Club Chicago news website last week.
Elsewhere, campaigners chalked up a major victory in Washington last year, where, after a protracted struggle, the tipped minimum wage will increase in stages until it reaches the standard rate for hourly workers in the capital, despite pressure from the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. And eight other states and territories, including California and Alaska, now require employers to pay tipped employees the full minimum wage before tips.
Activists in Chicago now hope to take advantage of a tight labor market for tipped workers amid recovery from the pandemic in a year in which the area’s leisure and hospitality industry has experienced the largest employment gains of any sector, forging ahead of health services and manufacturing.
Service workers in the Chicago area such as Antoinette Simmons pointed out that an improved minimum wage would ease reliance on tips that leaves workers open to exploitation and harassment from customers.
“I had to deal with harassment, most of the time bartending, and during the pandemic, it got really ugly,” Simmons said. During the pandemic, policing customers who refused to wear a mask was difficult. “So, yeah, you get cussed out, but I better make sure I make you a good drink and bring you food.”
The new legislation is not guaranteed passage through the council, despite support from the mayor and influential allies. Other lawmakers in Chicago, where city councillors are known as aldermen, who also wield significant power in their aldermanic fiefdoms, have quashed previous efforts to shake up the local restaurant industry.
In one of the most infamous cases, the recently retired alderman Tom Tunney spearheaded a law that effectively killed Chicago’s food truck business by prohibiting trucks from parking within 200ft of brick-and-mortar businesses selling food, including convenience stores. He was the owner of a popular North Side neighborhood brunch spot and former chairman of the Illinois Restaurant Association.
Previous efforts to raise the tipped minimum wage received pushback from Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, who argued that increasing tipped wages would strain restaurants.
In June, Toia told Crain’s Chicago that he was open to negotiating once the new bill is introduced. Those comments made One Fair Wage’s Jayaraman optimistic.
“The fact that we’re seeing willingness to talk about ending the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers on the part of the Restaurant Association, I think is a reflection of the fact that the mayor has very publicly stated that he’s prioritizing this issue. It gives us a very strong chance,” she said.
