Bowser announced that the Council had agreed to plan to pass her $15 minimum wage bill. (Photo by Rachel Sadon)

Mayor Muriel Bowser stood with nearly the entire D.C. Council, labor advocates, and restaurant industry leaders today to announce an agreement on a plan to raise the minimum wage to $15. A few hours later the Council passed that plan unanimously.

The District’s “prosperity does not touch every Washingtonian,” Bowser said, citing government analysis that the increase would directly benefit 127,000 workers. “Today, we’re taking a big step forward in the Fight for 15.”

The current minimum wage is set to go up to $11.50 in July, and tipped workers earn $2.77 an hour plus tips. Under the newly announced agreement—which puts D.C. alongside California and New York in enacting a $15 floor—the minimum wage would go up in increments until reaching $15 by 2020. Amid protestations from the restaurant industry, a provision to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers was lowered to $5 from $7.50 in Bowser’s original proposal. Both will be indexed to inflation thereafter.

The deal was preceded by efforts for a ballot initiative that almost certainly would have passed in November. The difference is that it would have eliminated a tipped minimum wage entirely. At a heated hearing, many members of the restaurant industry said that it would put them out of business, while advocates pointed to evidence from several states that doing so would benefit low-income workers. Bowser acknowledged that the specter of the initiative “really propelled everyone to act urgently.”

Delvone Michael, the executive director of DC Working Families and a co-chair of DC for $15, says they’ll continue collecting signatures until the bill is passed. If the plan proposed today is enacted and “some other stuff,” which he declined to elaborate upon, they will drop the initiative.

Also before the Council are bills to enact scheduling regulations and a proposal for paid family leave. The Council is currently evaluating how to pay for that plan, which has been modified to give workers 12 weeks of guaranteed paid leave and scales back how much high-income earners can get back. A proposed 1 percent payroll tax isn’t likely to cover the entire program, Mendelson said today, so they are working on adjustments to pay for the remainder. The bill could come before the Council before the recess, but it may be delayed until the fall, he added. A task force is slated to deliver a report on the issue and others that could affect the District’s competitiveness later this year.

For now though, nearly the entire D.C. Council joined the news conference, saying the $15 minimum wage bill would be passed on first reading this afternoon. “The fact that we’re all here speaks to the importance of this issue,” Chairman Phil Mendelson said. Added Vincent Orange: “The fight for $15, it lives, it breathes, and it will be approved today! We’re all one big happy family.”

But some advocates would dispute that. “This is not acceptable to us, and its an outrage that basically all of this would be achieved on the backs of thousands of poor women of color,” said Saru Jayaraman, the co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, one of the forces behind the ballot initiative. They plan to continue collecting signatures for now, and vow to continue the fight, though they are still working out exactly in what form. That could include going forth with the ballot measure on their own this year, or next year, or continuing to lobby the Council.

At the Council this afternoon, At-Large Councilmember David Grosso also took his colleagues to task for moving too quickly, saying that it is an act of “political theater” that doesn’t solve income inequality. He proposed an amendment, which the Council approved, to study the District’s cost of living and the possibility of a minimum income.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also weighed in, saying “I think it will do more harm than good.”