Photo by Kyle Walton

This afternoon, a D.C. Council committee will vote on a proposal to raise the minimum wage in D.C. to $11.50 by 2016. But while most are in favor of raising the District’s overall minimum wage, some specific language in the original bill—which recommended that the tipped minimum wage be raised from $2.77 to $8.25 an hour—has created quite a stir in the restaurant industry. And, as the debate over whether the Council should mandate an increase to the minimum wage for tipped employees heats up, another restaurant is asking its employees not to support that proposal: Clyde’s.

Clyde’s Restaurant Group—which owns and operates all D.C. Metropolitan area Clyde’s restaurants, as well 1789 Restaurant, Old Ebbitt Grill, The Tombs, and The Hamilton—sent an email, obtained by the DC Paid Sick Days & Minimum Wage Coalition, to its employees asking them to sign a petition to the Council against the tipped minimum wage bill. The official petition was started by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington and calls for the Council to leave the current system as is.

Last week, the popular Bloomingdale bar and restaurant Boundary Stone caught some serious flack on Twitter after posting a tweet urging their followers to sign RAMW’s petition. The tweet was later taken down, and in a Facebook post, Boundary Stone owner Gareth Croke issued an apology, saying “we do not stand in opposition to a bill for fair wages; we want all workers to be treated fairly and earn a wage which gives everyone a quality of life.”

The Hamilton and Old Ebbitt Grill managing director David Moran sent an email to his staff in mid-November urging them to sign RAMW’s petition against the Council’s tipped minimum wage bill. The full email is below:

Dear Old Ebbitt Grill and Hamilton Servers and Bartenders,

Please read the below email from the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington as well as the attached letter to the DC City Council regarding proposed changes to our industry. We strongly oppose this legislation and need you to join us in letting the DC City Council know that this is unnecessary and ultimately bad for our business and you personally. There is legislation proposed to either increase or do away with the current $2.77/hour tip credit wage forcing employers to pay all tipped employees a much higher rate.

A couple of facts that everyone should be aware of:

1- No one makes $2.77/hour…all employees must make at least the current minimum wage of $8.25/hour. After your weekly wages and tips are calculated and divided by the number of hours you work, we must ensure that everyone is paid at least minimum wage. This has never been an issue with our servers and bartenders at either the Ebbitt or The Hamilton. Our current average hourly rate for servers is over $20/hour and higher for bartenders. Top earners in both departments at both restaurants earn more than $30/hour under the current tipping system.

2-Why is This Bad for You?…while our restaurants are very busy and successful, like most in this industry we operate on thin profit margins. Increasing the wages for all tipped employees by possibly 300% (to current minimum wage) is not something that we can do without fundamentally changing the way we do business. This proposal would cost us alone several million dollars that we would need to come up with each year. Most likely, we will be forced to do away with our current tipping system and adopt the European model of service charges where each employee is paid an hourly wage determined by the house and paid biweekly in the form of a paycheck…No More Tips! This is not good for you! You are some of the best world class servers and bartenders and make great money based on your knowledge, work ethic, personality and knowing that you have the ability to wow guests and earn great tips.

3-Why Do We Need You To Sign This Letter?….We have repeatedly met with DC City Council to express ourselves on behalf of the restaurants and our staffs. While we believe we have been moderately successful in expressing our position, we have heard repeatedly that the Council would like to hear this directly from our employees….so I am urging you to read both the email from RAMW as well as the proposed letter to the DC City Council and sign the petition.

In the many conversations I have had recently about this topic, I think it was best summed up by another restaurant owner when he said, “This is a bad solution for something that is not a problem.”

Feel free to discuss this with me at anytime.

Sincerely,

David N. Moran
Managing Director

Multiple requests for comment from Moran and Clyde’s Restaurant Group has not been returned.

Moran forwarded the email to management of Clyde’s Restaurant Group’s other eateries, urging them to send it to their employees.

Now, a former employee of Clyde’s, Evelyn Argueta, has started her own petition, calling for Clyde’s Restaurant Group to “quit pressuring employees to sign a restaurant lobby’s petition, and to pledge not to retaliate against any employee who supports [the] legislation.” RAMW’s petition-signers are visible to the public, so theoretically any Clyde’s Restaurant Group employee who didn’t sign it could be identified. That, Argueta feels, impedes on the staff’s right to freely express their own opinions without the fear of repercussion. “Restaurant employees should be allowed to freely express their opinions as private citizens,” Argueta writes in the petition, “just as anyone else.”