The D.C. Council overturned a 2018 measure that would have required employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage. Now a former restaurant employee wants to put the measure back on the ballot in 2022.

Tyrone Turner / WAMU

More than two years after D.C. lawmakers overturned a ballot initiative that would have required employers to pay a higher base salary to tipped workers, a local restaurant worker is reviving the effort.

Ryan O’Leary, a former service worker who was laid off from his downtown restaurant job during the pandemic, filed a ballot initiative with the D.C. Board of Elections today that proposes gradually raising the city’s tipped minimum wage until it’s on par with the regular minimum wage. In 2018, voters approved Initiative 77, which would have done the same — if it hadn’t been tossed out by the D.C. Council.

O’Leary is now a paid organizer for the national advocacy group One Fair Wage, which supports phasing out the two-wage system.

“I remember very vividly Initiative 77 back in 2018 — how when it was passed, the Council overturned the will of the people,” O’Leary says. “Now with different Council members, as well as the wage shortage that we’re having nationwide, I think those two things make it important that we reintroduce this.”

O’Leary is spearheading the initiative with Aniyah Vines, a senior at Howard University. “I know too many individuals who feel that they have no other choice but to withstand workplace harassment to hustle for tips because they desperately need the money,” Vines said in a statement. “Our fight is for those who are not able to fight for themselves.”

This latest effort comes at a time when restaurant workers and labor advocates across the country have been calling attention to low pay, sexual harassment, a lack of job security and other workplace shortcomings in the hospitality industry in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restaurants are struggling to hire servers, cooks and dishwashers. Many say they’re hesitant to return to jobs at bars and restaurants as businesses reopen, citing a lack of affordable childcare, the allure of federally subsidized unemployment benefits, or better treatment and compensation elsewhere.

Advocates also say some tipped workers also discovered during the pandemic that their dependence on cash tips lowered their on-paper income, reducing the amount of unemployment benefits they could receive.

As of March, job openings at restaurants and hotels had reached a record high, according to federal data analyzed by the Washington Post. Some restaurant owners have attributed the large number of vacancies to a labor shortage, while labor advocates and workers such as O’Leary have taken to calling it a “wage shortage” instead. Labor shortages can be solved by increasing pay, they say, echoing an axiom from left-leaning economists.

O’Leary wants the initiative, the Full Minimum Wage for Tipped Workers Amendment Act, to appear on D.C.’s 2022 Democratic primary ballot. (Voters who are not registered Democrats can still vote on ballot initiatives during the primary.) As written, the initiative would entitle tipped employees such as bussers, bartenders, bellhops and servers to the same minimum wage as other workers in the District by 2027, after a series of raises that kick in Jan. 1, 2023.

The D.C. Board of Elections must approve the initiative as “proper subject matter” in the next two months. If that happens, O’Leary and other volunteers will have to gather about 26,000 valid signatures by March 2022 to place the measure on the June ballot.

Currently, D.C. employers are required to pay tipped employees at least $5 an hour, not counting gratuities. The tipped minimum wage rises to $5.05 on July 1. The regular minimum wage is now $15, rising to $15.20 on July 1. If tipped workers don’t earn at least the regular minimum wage after gratuities on a weekly basis, employers are required to make up the difference. But O’Leary says that requirement isn’t always enforced. In the past, he says, restaurant managers have accused him of hiding tips after his average weekly earnings came in under the minimum.

“I was either seen as doing something illegal, nefarious, or that I wasn’t a good enough waiter to get the tips that everyone else was getting,” O’Leary says.

As written, the ballot measure wouldn’t make any changes to how employers must handle tipping. Many workers who fought against Initiative 77 three years ago worried that requiring establishments to pay the full minimum wage — rather than letting customers pay it themselves with their tips — would cause some diners to tip less, if they tipped at all.

Some workers reported that customers began withholding tips after voters approved the measure in 2018. But O’Leary calls anxiety about the end of tipping overblown. “I find that to be a fear tactic used by restaurant owners specifically to try to scare their employees into not supporting giving themselves a raise,” he says.

Many hospitality workers in the city don’t agree. In a recent interview with DCist/WAMU, Zachary Hoffman with the D.C. Bar and Restaurant Workers Alliance said his group doesn’t support another campaign to phase out D.C.’s subminimum wage.

“If [restaurant owners] 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,” Hoffman said.

After One Fair Wage and O’Leary organized a rally outside of Old Ebbitt Grill last month calling for higher wages in the restaurant industry, few local workers showed up in support, according to individuals who attended the event.

The restaurant industry is likely to wage a fierce and well-funded battle against any attempt to phase out the tipped wage, as happened in 2018. Hospitality companies, restaurant owners, and industry representatives including Clyde’s, Silver Diner Development, Matchbox Food Group, Penn Social, and the National Restaurant Association contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the anti-Initiative 77 effort in 2018, campaign finance records show.

O’Leary and One Fair Wage may face another hurdle in the form of D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who argued in 2018 that servers and other tipped employees are already entitled to the regular minimum wage under current law, even if some employers don’t follow the rules.

“Employers who exploit employees will do so regardless, and the answer is not to change the economics of all restaurants, or to jeopardize the pay of well-paid tipped workers, but to improve enforcement by the government,” Mendelson said at the time.

But the Council also has two new members who may differ with the chairman. Christina Henderson, who won an at-large Council seat last year, says she supported Initiative 77. The same is true for Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who condemned the Council’s 8-5 vote to override the measure in a 2019 Facebook post.

“Even if you don’t agree with me on this, agree with DC voters. We passed Initiative 77 by public vote. Our representatives on the Council took it out from underneath us. That’s not how government should work,” George wrote.

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