Of all Brandon Johnson’s quests to interfere with the health of Chicago’s small businesses, his campaign to abolish the so-called “tipped minimum wage” surely is his most quixotic. Given that it benefits almost no one.
That hourly rate is less than the state’s minimum wage, for sure, but state law already requires employers to make up the difference if tips do not do the job. And, as any experienced waiter knows, the vast majority of servers in Chicago make more, some far more, than the minimum wage once tips are taken into account. An overwhelming percentage of the fiscally savvy would far rather keep the current system, with its higher dollars-per-hour potential, than lose their job thanks to a restaurant going under, or lose hours as a ballooning wage bill forces eateries with low margins, which is most eateries, to cut back. And our great Chicago servers certainly don’t want their favorite customers to get the message that they should no longer tip at the current 15 to 20% levels. That’s a losing proposition for servers and restaurants.
Some have made the case that servers deserve both the higher wage and full-on tips on top (along with Donald Trump’s new tax breaks), but while we love our servers, we’ve not heard anyone argue logically why they should gain all this when the kitchen employees, or an employee in fast food, or many other American workers, do not. Even many of those who support Johnson on other issues are scratching their head over this one. After all, if a restaurant wants to keep a valued workforce of servers, it is free to pay whatever it takes.
We’ve written all this many times, of course, but we’re popping back up to laud the so-called compromise at City Hall, as brokered by Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett, 27th, and the Committee on Workforce Development, that appears to have the votes in the full council to go around the mayor and pause the stepped increase in the tipped minimum wage at 76% of Chicago’s minimum wage for a substantial two-year period for larger restaurants and bars and a hefty four years for mom-and-pop operations (those with between three and 21 employees).
We don’t love that last part, as we think all for-profit restaurants in the city of Chicago should be on the same level playing field and we certainly don’t hail a situation where an expanding local eatery might decide not to expand past 21 employees due to this deal, but then no compromise is ideal.
What we do love is that even the two-year freeze on the tipped minimum wage extends past the end of the current mayoral term, something we are sure was not lost on restaurant whisperer Sam Toia of the Illinois Restaurant Association and his beleaguered community. By then, we will potentially be looking at a very different mayor and city council, and it’s hard to imagine any mayor not named Brandon Johnson taking up this ridiculous fight and going after scores of this city’s most prized assets. And by that we include hospitality workers.
Seen that way, the prospect of this issue quietly dying in the future is more of a W than a draw for the hard-pressed restaurant industry and its servers, and an L for the out-of-state One Fair Wage activist group, which got outplayed in a city it never tried to understand — and, of course, for the mayor.
The hospitality industry converges on Chicago this weekend for the National Restaurant Show. Let’s hope some creative new chef owners are emboldened to set up shop here.
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