Compromise on Tipped Worker Base Pay


Following a backlash from the restaurant industry over Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and the base wage for tipped workers to $7.50, the D.C. Council has revised the bill to increase the base wage from $2.77 to $5.55 by July 2020.

Restaurant owners contend that increasing the portion of servers’ compensation that they are responsible for will harm their businesses by driving up costs, increasing menu prices and decreasing the number of tipped workers they can employ and the hours they can work, ultimately leading to their lower pay.

In D.C., restaurant workers are required to make minimum wage regardless of their tips. If the base wage, plus tips, does not meet the minimum wage, the restaurant must make up the difference.

Proponents of an across-the-board minimum-wage increase cite San Francisco, where tipped workers receive the minimum wage of $12.25, plus tips, and have the highest median wage in the country at $21.50 per hour, while D.C’s median pay for tipped workers is $13.80, according to PayScale.com. Delvon Michael, director of DC Working Families, claims that menu prices are not significantly higher than those in D.C.

While she did not mention tipped workers’ base pay, Mayor Bowser thanked Council member Vincent Orange, who drafted the compromise, and the DC Council Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs for passing the “Fair Shot Minimum Wage Amendment Act of 2016.” In a statement she wrote: “I applaud the D.C. Council for taking this important step toward raising the hourly minimum wage to $15. I introduced this legislation to put more money in the pockets of working families, and put more people on a pathway to the middle class.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *