The organization behind D.C.’s tossed-out effort to raise the tipped minimum wage plans to hold a “wage strike” outside the Old Ebbitt Grill Wednesday, citing challenges facing restaurant workers as the local hospitality industry begins to unthaw.

Restaurant workers across the country “do not want to go back to work to earn poverty wages putting their lives on the line,” said a statement from Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a national advocacy organization that supports raising wages for hospitality workers. “Now is the time to change that.”

A spokesperson for One Fair Wage says organizers selected Old Ebbitt Grill because the restaurant group that owns it fiercely opposed raising wages for restaurant workers in 2018. One Fair Wage expects more than 50 people to participate in the demonstration, which begins at 12:30 p.m., and concludes at Clyde’s in Gallery Place.

D.C. restaurant owners say they’re having a hard time finding staff as COVID-19 restrictions loosen and eateries welcome customers back to dining rooms. Some owners have blamed the staff shortages on unemployment benefits, calling the $300 weekly federal supplement a disincentive for people to return to work.

But many restaurant workers say they have legitimate concerns about re-entering the restaurant industry, including low pay, a lack of benefits, high transportation costs, and pandemic-related health and safety concerns. A recent survey of restaurant workers by One Fair Wage found that more than half of respondents are considering leaving their restaurant jobs, with 76% citing low wages and tips. COVID health risks were the second most common reason. Most survey respondents said that having a “full, stable, livable wage” would help keep them in the industry.

A recent working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco suggests that the additional $300 unemployment benefits provided by federal relief efforts are not a major reason restaurant workers have decided to stay home.

Restaurant owners have been hesitant to permanently raise wages to attract more staff, with some saying they can’t afford pay increases after months of depressed sales. Others say they don’t want to make long-term financial decisions based on temporary conditions like the pandemic and the lure of unemployment benefits. Instead, many operators have attempted to attract workers with short-term incentives like signing bonuses. One local restaurant even offered bonuses paid in cryptocurrency, Washington City Paper reported.

The pandemic has revived calls across the country to increase wages for tipped workers. In the D.C. region, many restaurant employees who were out of work for months are now returning to the industry — only to find tips are considerably lower than they were before the health crisis, and employers aren’t willing or able to make up the gap.

One Fair Wage is planning to hold wage strikes this week in San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and New Hampshire. The organization is “calling for an end to the subminimum wage for tipped workers and demanding a full minimum wage with tips on top.”

Many D.C. restaurant workers may not be ready to join forces with One Fair Wage after the organization’s failed attempt to eliminate the tipped wage in the District in 2018. Restaurant workers across the city mobilized against Initiative 77, the One Fair Wage-sponsored ballot measure that would have gradually raised tipped workers’ pay to be on par with the regular minimum wage. (Under current law, tipped workers receive a base wage of $5.05, not including gratuities. If they earn less than the minimum wage after tips, employers are required to make up the difference.)  Voters approved the initiative over intense opposition from the restaurant industry and many workers themselves, who said raising wages would threaten tips, their primary source of income.

The D.C. Council later overturned Initiative 77 amid an uproar from both sides.

Zachary Hoffman with the D.C. Bar and Restaurant Workers Alliance — which opposed Initiative 77 — says One Fair Wage doesn’t represent the interests of all restaurant workers, and he doesn’t support their campaign to raise wages across the board. But he agrees the industry is due for change.

“Culturally, changes are needed. Sexual harassment needs to be addressed,” Hoffman says. Wage transparency is also necessary, he says, particularly in settings where workers pool their tips and divide them up at the end of the day.

Hoffman says employers will raise wages if they believe they have to in order to attract workers, but there shouldn’t be a mandate to do so. “If they want to pay people $14, or even $20 with tips, that’s on the business. But not every business is set up in a way that makes that sustainable,” he says.

But federal data show that wages haven’t risen rapidly despite high demand for workers. At a press conference last month, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed the idea of a worker shortage gripping the nation.

“We don’t see wages moving up yet,” Powell said, “And presumably, we would see that in a really tight labor market.”

This story has been updated to include more information about the wage strike from a One Fair Wage spokesperson, and to change the word “botched” to “tossed-out,” in a passage about the fate of Initiative 77. The word “botched” suggested the ballot initiative failed; in fact, voters approved the measure and the D.C. Council overturned it.