As Mayor Brandon Johnson stares down another veto fight, his opponents trying to freeze required restaurant worker pay raises are signaling they do not have the votes to win.
Aldermen are set to vote Wednesday on halting planned tipped worker wage bumps set to eliminate Chicago’s subminimum wage in 2028. But after Johnson vetoed the City Council’s initial 30-18 vote last month, they will need a supermajority that has so far failed to materialize.
Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, said Tuesday his side was still short of the needed 34-aldermen threshold.
“All I can tell you is that we are going to work it up to the last minute,” he said.
Meanwhile, Northwest Side Ald. Jessie Fuentes, leading the charge to protect the so-called One Fair Wage ordinance, calmly predicted victory for her side.
“They don’t have the votes to override,” Fuentes said. “Tipped workers will get their raise in July.”
By freezing the raises — and temporarily reversing an early-term win for the self-dubbed “most pro-worker mayor in the country” — aldermen proved again that they have become far more willing to fight Johnson’s agenda. The initial One Fair Wage ordinance passed 36-10, but just three years later, 30 aldermen voted against it.
But a failure to override Johnson’s veto Wednesday would drive home another point: He is still the man on the fifth floor and, even with a weakened political position, holds enormous sway over what legislation passes.
The subminimum wage was set at $9.48 an hour when aldermen first passed the increase. At all times, employers have been required to make up the difference between the lower rate and the city’s minimum wage when tips do not make up the difference, though Johnson and other supporters have argued many do not.
After the first two planned pay increases, the subminimum wage is now $12.62 an hour, roughly three-quarters of the city’s $16.60 hourly minimum. Aldermen are trying to freeze those pay increases, not undo the ones that have already occurred. The subminimum wage is set to rise again in July and fully match the minimum wage in 2028.
The hard-fought battle — pitched in part by the Illinois Restaurant Association aiming to freeze raises, and the One Fair Wage national political organization trying to sustain them — has included a flood of hard-to-vet claims from both sides eager to state how the mandated pay bumps have affected workers and restaurants.
The sides have had sharply contrasting views on whether more or fewer restaurants are operating in the city since the increases started to take effect.
Johnson’s administration shared new data Tuesday that it argued shows the number of full-service restaurants operating in the city jumped from the first year of implementation, 2024, to 2025.
According to an analysis by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, 5,471 “traditional restaurants” featuring seating and service were licensed to operate in the city in 2024, while 5,655 had the licenses in 2025.
Meanwhile, the number of licenses for “fast food” restaurants featuring counter service rose by only nine in the same period, while 26 fewer cafeterias were licensed and the license total for establishments selling desserts, coffee or baked goods rose by eight.
BACP staff used public data to identify all retail food licenses for the two years, and determined whether each belonged to a “traditional restaurant,” according to Miguel Campos, director of the Office of Labor Standards at BACP.
Toia argued the license data is not accurate because licenses are issued on a two-year term, meaning businesses that closed in 2025 might still be included in the city’s count.
“Using licenses issued completely ignores potential closures,” he said. “More than that, their data says nothing about shift cuts, take-home reduced and positions eliminated.”
He cited another batch of data: a report shared by Crain’s Chicago Business in December that said Chicago had lost 496 restaurants in the first half of 2025. The article, based on data from market research firm Datassential, did not say how many restaurants had opened in that time for the notoriously high-failure industry.
According to the same article Toia pointed to, far more restaurants — 689 — closed in the same period of 2024. Asked about the discrepancy, Toia said the elimination of the subminimum wage was “piling on” after a difficult period for restaurants, many of which faced forced closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Toia repeated a line he has used over and over in recent months after listing off retail corridors across Chicago where he says empty storefronts abound: “Your eyes do not lie.”
Toia predicted that many restaurants will add service charges if the subminimum wage continues to be eliminated. Such a shift could make diners less likely to tip, he added.
“Me and you go out to eat, we see the service charge, maybe we leave something, maybe we don’t,” he said.
His goal is simple, he argued: “I’m out here fighting for the small, independent family restaurants.”
Militza Pagan, named the city’s deputy mayor for labor relations by Johnson last week, said there is little evidence that the raises have led to restaurant closures. The Johnson administration’s goal “is to ensure that workers are treated with dignity and respect,” she said.
“Being treated with dignity and respect means being paid fairly for your work and enough to provide for your family,” she said. “In a time of rising costs, government should be doing everything possible to ensure that (workers) have enough to provide for their families.”
Halting the wage increases planned for the next three years would create instability for the city’s tipped restaurant workers, who are disproportionately women of color, she said. The raises have already led to average annual raises of $6,600 for them, she added.
