Kamala Harris Should Run on Ending the Subminimum Wage for Tipped Workers
As the DNC convenes in Chicago, Democrats should follow the city’s lead by embracing a pro-worker policy that ends a legacy of discrimination and exploitation.
Nataki Rhodes and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa
Nearly 44,000 tipped workers in Chicago received a raise last month when, for the first time in U.S. history, a municipality voluntarily eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
This subminimum wage — often referred to as a tip penalty — is a direct legacy of slavery and racism. As research by Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley reveals, following the Civil War, white bosses did not believe their Black employees deserved dignified pay. This led to the institution of tipping as the form of compensation for service industry workers. When the first federal minimum wage was enacted in 1938, part of FDR’s New Deal program, the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) successfully lobbied to enshrine this discriminatory practice into law. Today, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is a mere $2.13 per hour, a stark reminder of our nation’s history of exploitation.
In theory, the tips paid to service industry workers should make up the difference between the subminimum wage and the full minimum wage. If the tips don’t make up the difference, then the employer is meant to fill the gap, but wage theft is rampant in the restaurant industry. A 2016 Obama administration report found that this rule is “complex and hard to enforce.” The result: service industry workers — overwhelmingly Black and brown women — are more likely to live under the poverty line.
Last October, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago City Council responded to this unfair system by passing legislation to eliminate the subminimum wage after a six-year campaign led by a movement of tipped workers and restaurant employers who understood that the status quo was untenable for their industry and their workers. We’re both proud to have been leaders in that fight.
By eliminating the subminimum wage, Chicago is on the path to joining Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, and numerous other cities where restaurant workers receive the full minimum wage with tips on top. Still, Chicago is the only city where elected leaders voluntarily chose to end the subminimum wage. All other U.S. cities with One Fair Wage — where service industry workers receive a full minimum wage with tips on top — do so because of state law.
Eight states have One Fair Wage, the most recent addition being Michigan, where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of One Fair Wage on July 31. The movement for One Fair Wage is gaining momentum, with initiatives currently moving in more than 12 states.
A Statista poll of 1,605 U.S. adults conducted from July 21 to 23, found that 25% of voters ranked inflation and prices as the most critical issue they face. An additional 10% ranked jobs and the economy as their number one issue — meaning more than one in three voters are most concerned about their pocketbooks as we approach the November election.
In the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., 55% of voters approved One Fair Wage via a June 2018 ballot referendum, Initiative 77. After the D.C. Council repealed Initiative 77, voters returned to the ballot box. A multi-racial coalition of voters once again approved One Fair Wage in November 2022 via Initiative 82, which received a whopping 73.94% of the vote.
Raising wages for tipped restaurant workers is good policy and good politics. As the Democratic National Convention convenes in Chicago this week, and Vice President Kamala Harris begins to lay out her policy agenda as the party’s nominee, now is the time to embrace One Fair Wage as part of an economic platform to help American workers struggling to make ends meet. While Harris has reportedly gotten behind a policy calling for no taxes on tips, this is no substitute for eliminating the predatory subminimum wage altogether and allowing workers to collect their full pay with tips on top.
After all, from the 8-hour work day to the organization of the United States’ first Black labor union to the birth of the American labor movement, the United States has never gone wrong by following Chicago’s lead in the struggle for workers’ rights and economic justice. This is a chance for the Democratic Party to follow in that proud tradition.
Disclosure: Views expressed are those of the writers. As a 501©3 nonprofit, In These Times does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.
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Nataki L. Rhodes is the National Lead Organizer for One Fair Wage.
35th Ward Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa is a member of the Chicago City Council’s Progressive Caucus and Democratic Socialist Caucus. Elected in May 2015, he represents the northwest side Chicago neighborhoods of Avondale, Hermosa, Irving Park, and Logan Square.
