{"id":877088,"date":"2022-11-09T22:01:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=1fe6893b6386beaa31d0ea47cfc7a326"},"modified":"2022-11-09T22:01:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:01:48","slug":"dc-voters-overwhelmingly-pass-measure-to-end-tipped-minimum-wage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/11\/09\/dc-voters-overwhelmingly-pass-measure-to-end-tipped-minimum-wage\/","title":{"rendered":"DC Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Measure to End Tipped Minimum Wage"},"content":{"rendered":"

A measure to end the subminimum wage for tipped workers in Washington, D.C. passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday, marking a win for labor and wage activists who have been fighting the restaurant industry to pass such a measure for years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, the tipped minimum wage in D.C. is $5.35 an hour, leaving workers reliant on tips to survive. Initiative 82 would start phasing out that wage, eventually raising tipped workers\u2019 minimum hourly wage to that of non-tipped workers, currently $16.10, by 2027.<\/span><\/p>\n

With 90 percent of votes counted on Wednesday, <\/span>according to <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>, the measure has 74 percent of the vote, with only 26 percent opposed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tipped workers say that the maintenance of the subminimum wage means their income is subject to the whims of customers and bosses, leaving them vulnerable to wage theft by <\/span>greedy<\/span><\/a> restaurant owners and resulting in <\/span>vast uncertainty over their finances<\/span><\/a>. Raising tipped workers\u2019 base wages, advocates say, could provide workers with far more stability while workers as a <\/span>whole would make more<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>still be allowed<\/span><\/a> to collect tips. <\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, research has shown that workers are less likely to experience poverty in states that have already eliminated the tipped minimum wage, <\/span>like Washington and California<\/span><\/a>. These states have also been able to maintain a strong restaurant industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

One Fair Wage, an anti-subminimum wage group, celebrated the passage of the measure. \u201cMost people in America, regardless of their political affiliation, agree that everyone who works deserves to be paid a livable wage that allows them to feed their families and stay and work in D.C.\u201d<\/span> said Saru Jayaraman<\/span><\/a>, One Fair Wage president, in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

The vote is a redo of 2018, when the city held a vote on a similar issue. Though voters <\/span>also voted then to phase<\/span><\/a> out the subminimum wage, with 55 percent of voters favoring the measure, it was overturned when D.C. council members <\/span>defied the will of voters<\/span><\/a> and repealed the initiative, with Mayor Muriel Bowser declining to veto the repeal.<\/span><\/p>\n

A <\/span>Washington City Paper<\/span><\/i> poll<\/span><\/a> found that there isn\u2019t a majority among city council members to do the same now, indicating that the measure will stand this time.<\/span><\/p>\n

But still, Initiative 82 met its own share of resistance: the restaurant industry had waged a <\/span>legal battle<\/span><\/a> to stop the initiative from appearing on the ballot and spent over $643,000 to defeat the measure after a judge dismissed their lawsuit. Proponents of the measure raised only $438,000 \u2014 and won decisively anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other places also voted on wage-related measures on Tuesday, with mixed results. In <\/span>Portland, Maine<\/span><\/a>, residents voted against a proposal to eliminate the subminimum wage and raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2025, even though workers <\/span>must make at least $18 an hour to survive in the area<\/span><\/a>, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s living wage calculator. Currently, the town\u2019s minimum wage is only $13 an hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wage advocates had better luck in Nebraska, <\/span>where voters approved<\/span><\/a> a measure to increase the state minimum wage from its current level of $9 an hour to $15 an hour starting in 2026, after which it would be adjusted yearly to the cost of living. The measure passed decisively with a margin of over 16 points with over 95 percent of votes counted, according to <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The success of the measure, even in a red state, perhaps shows the appetite for an overhaul of the minimum wage at a federal level. The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in 2009. Today, it still sits at a mere $7.25 an hour \u2014 marking the longest period in U.S. history that the minimum wage has gone without an increase. <\/span><\/p>\n

When adjusted for inflation, <\/span>the value<\/span><\/a> of the minimum wage is now at its lowest point since the 1960s, the Economic Policy Institute found in a report earlier this year. Its real value has declined 17 percent since it was raised in 2009, according to the report.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Latest - Truthout<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it is not repealed, the measure will raise the minimum wage for tipped workers from $5.35 to $16.10 an hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37957,453,11259,801,4119,4,39688,5946,4665],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877560,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877088\/revisions\/877560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}