In two sessions at the Wilson Building today, the D.C. Council overturned Initiative 77, the ballot measure that gradually raises the minimum wage employers are required to pay tipped workers.
Lawmakers also nixed a compromise — introduced by Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) — that would have raised the wage only for the city's lowest-paid tipped workers, such as parking attendants and bellhops.
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D.C. voters approved the referendum in June, but it has been embroiled in controversy ever since, with restaurant workers and owners calling on the Council to throw it out despite its win at the polls. In a marathon hearing at the Wilson Building in September, opponents testified that raising employers' labor costs would destroy jobs, discourage tipping and devastate the restaurant and bar industries.
http://dcist.com/2018/10/dc_council_votes_to_repeal_initiati.php
Putting DC's city council on the same side as Tea Party Congressional Republicans who introduced legislation to stop the voter-approved initiative from being enacted.
Why was raising the minimum wage so important? The experts:
Although a small number of tipped workers are employed in high-end restaurants where they earn significant amounts in tips and receive higher incomes, high-earning servers are not representative of DC's tipped workforce. Currently, the median annual wage for bartenders and servers is approximately $31,000 and $25,000, respectively. The median annual wage for a hairdresser is about $30,000. The MIT Living Wage Calculator, which considers regional costs of living, estimates that a District worker with two children must make $32.50 per hour, or $68,000 annually to adequately provide for her family — more than twice what a bartender or hairdresser in the District make.
Living on tips does not provide sufficient, predictable income or economic security. Tipped workers — about 70 percent of whom are people of color — experience a poverty rate nearly twice that of other workers. In the District, the poverty rate of tipped workers is 13.7 percent—more than three times the poverty rate of non-tipped workers (4.5 percent) and Black tipped workers have a poverty rate of 18.5 percent. According to the Economic Policy Institute, average wages for tipped workers are nearly 40 percent lower than for all workers. Currently, 16 percent of DC's tipped workers have incomes that qualify them for SNAP benefits. In the District, most tipped work is low-wage work.
https://www.dcfpi.org/all/repeal-is-not-the-answer-dc-tipped-workers-need-a-raise/
And:
- The median wage of tipped workers in D.C. is $14.41 per hour, inclusive of tips, which is 44 percent of the median hourly wage of nontipped workers in D.C. And because tipped workers get fewer hours on average, median tipped workers in D.C. annually earn only 34 percent of the median annual earnings of nontipped workers.
- There are significant pay disparities within the tipped workforce. Black tipped workers are paid 23 percent less per hour (in wages and tips) than white tipped workers. Women tipped workers are paid 8 percent less per hour, and 20 percent less annually, in wages and tips than men tipped workers. Women tipped workers tend to work fewer hours per week than men, for reasons that are likely involuntary for some.
- The poverty rate of tipped workers in D.C. is 13.7 percent—more than three times the poverty rate of nontipped workers (4.5 percent). Black tipped workers have a poverty rate of 18.5 percent.
https://www.epi.org/publication/tip...thrive-why-dc-should-implement-initiative-77/
The areas of DC that voted to raise the minimum wage were more often black and more often in poverty.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/06/how-dc-voted-on-initiative-77/563300/
The breakdown of precincts voting in favor:
The racial breakdown of precincts:
Confusingly, the council members that voted to repeal represented the very communities that voted most heavily in favor of raising the minimum wage. The council members that represent whiter areas of the city actually voted against repeal.
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And it's final.
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