Chicago Progressives Voted to Freeze Minimum Wage Hikes for Restaurant Workers. Why Won’t the Mayor Listen?

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While eliminating the tipped wage may sound like a win on paper for waiters, the results have been disconcerting.

In recent years, the progressive left has pursued a systematic effort to apply the traditional minimum wage to restaurant workers. The latest battleground for this fight has become Chicago, where the progressive city council recently bowed to economic reality and voted to freeze another pending minimum wage hike for restaurant employees in the city. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, however, has responded by vetoing the measure and is instead doubling down on the Windy City's pro–minimum wage and anti-tipping regime.

At the center of the Chicago fireworks is an ongoing progressive effort to eliminate what's known as the tipped-wage credit for restaurant and hospitality workers. The tip credit allows these workers to be paid below the minimum wage—but with the backstop that their tips must make up the difference. Once the tip credit is repealed, servers then need to be paid a traditional minimum wage upwards of $15-20 per hour, just like any other industry.

The Chicago City Council passed the "One Fair Wage Ordinance" in 2023, eliminating the tipped wage and requiring restaurant workers receive gradual annual raises until they reach the full minimum. The council's recent about-face would have stopped those increases at where the tipped wage currently sits in its upward trajectory: 76 percent of the city's $16.60 minimum wage. Washington, D.C. was the first major American city to repeal its tip credit regime in 2022; the push has continued via the efforts of One Fair Wage, a progressive organization that seeks to eliminate the tip credit nationwide.

Continue reading the entire piece here at Reason

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C. Jarrett Dieterle is a legal policy fellow for the Manhattan Institute.