While unveiling her budget proposal today, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she wants to repeal Initiative 82, the DC law phasing out the tipped minimum wage. Instead of the base wage for servers, bartenders, and other tipped workers increasing to $12 per hour in July, the Mayor’s proposal would revert the wage back to about half that. (Either way, employers still have to ensure workers make the full minimum wage of $17.50 with tips.)
“We have been alarmed over the last several years about the changes to the industry, outside of our control—but some within our control,” Bowser said in a press conference. She said restaurants faced a “perfect storm” with increased costs, higher rents, and “unique labor challenges” and that restoring DC’s previous tipped minimum wage law would “bring out policies in line with the region.”
The news follows the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington’s recent announcement that it would lobby for a repeal, plus a handful of high-profile closures—including Haikan, Sticky Rice, and Brookland’s Finest— that cited Initiative 82 among their reasons for calling it quits. Still, a repeal is likely to face an uphill battle with the DC Council.
“I don’t think the support is there in the Council as I am standing here,” DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said in a legislative press conference today, upon hearing about the Mayor’s budget proposal.
The DC Council repealed a similar ballot initiative in 2018 but has not expressed an appetite for doing so again. Mendelson said that he did not personally support Initiative 82, which he called a “mistake,” but he’s also previously said that he would not support repealing it. “Now that was several years ago and times have changed,” he added. “There has to be a lot of work done by others to ensure that there’s a majority sentiment behind that, and I don’t know whether there is.”
DC voters passed Initiative 82 with 74-percent of the vote in 2022, when the minimum wage for tipped workers was $5.35. The measure incrementally increases the tipped wage until it’s on par with the full minimum wage in 2027. It’s currently $10 per hour.
Despite its landslide win, the law has proven to be incredibly controversial. Supporters herald “one fair wage” as a way to make tipped workers’ income more predictable and less dependent on the generosity and biases of strangers. But opponents say it’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist—many tipped workers make far more than minimum wage anyway—and that it ultimately hurts businesses and forces them to cut staff and implement unpopular service fees.
Up until recently, the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington has said that despite its opposition to the law, it would not try to overturn it. Initially, the group pushed to speed up the implementation with a “rip off the Band-Aid” approach. When that wasn’t successful, they lobbied for a pause in the rollout. Then in March, RAMW President Shawn Townsend said they would ultimately push to kill Initiative 82 altogether.
In RAMW’s survey of more than 200 restaurants earlier this year, two-thirds said they were “extremely” concerned about the continued elimination of the tip credit. The same survey also made headlines for saying 44-percent of full-service casual DC restaurants are somewhat or very likely to close this year. “Without action, we risk irreparable harm to restaurants and employees citywide,” Townsend recently told Washingtonian in a written statement.
Other groups are gearing up for a fight too. Restaurant union Unite Here Local 25 says “hundreds” of restaurant workers will rally outside the Wilson Building on Tuesday, May 5 with signs reading “No repeal, stop the steal!” and “i82 repeal = wage theft.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
