Yesterday, six members of the DC Council voted unanimously to raise DC’s minimum wage to $11.50 by 2016 and to give a yearly cost-of-living increase thereafter. The same DC Council committee also voted unanimously to include tipped restaurant workers in the city’s paid sick leave law, closing a major gap in the groundbreaking legislation that was passed in 2008. The bill would also allow workers to accrue sick leave from the first day on the job and use it after a 90-day probationary period. Now both bills move to a full council vote on December 3.
The increase in the minimum wage is consistent with the recommendations of leading economists. Their review of numerous studies finds that that prior federal and state minimum wage increases affecting about 15 percent of workers had positive impacts on income without negative side effects.
Thank you DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Committee on Business, Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Vincent Orange, and Councilmembers Jim Graham, Yvette Alexander, David Grosso, and Mary Cheh for supporting these bills.
A special thanks to Councilmember Cheh for being an advocate for DC’s tipped workers, who were not included in the bill that moved forward yesterday. DC’s current wage for tipped workers is held flat at $2.77 an hour, with workers under the law guaranteed to make the minimum wage through what’s known as the “tip credit.” The federal minimum wage for tipped workers at times has been set at 60 percent of the full minimum wage, and seven states currently require tipped workers to be paid the full minimum wage. A companion Montgomery County bill being considered today would require tipped workers to be paid at least 50 percent of the local minimum wage. With an $11.50 minimum wage, tipped workers in Montgomery County would have to be paid at least $5.75 an hour by 2016.
Cheh proposed an amendment that would make DC’s approach to the tipped minimum parallel to the bill in Montgomery County. The amendment did not pass, meaning the adopted bill keeps the tipped worker minimum wage at $2.77, although several members said they were sympathetic to tipped workers and would be open to more information about the issue.
The median wage for DC workers who identify themselves as waiters and waitresses was $9.23 per hour in 2012, including both tips and hourly pay, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In other words, 50 percent of servers make more than $9.23 and 50 percent make less. The mean income, which is the average of all servers including those who might make up to $72 an hour at Black Salt, is $13.08.
And wages for DC’s tipped restaurant workers have not kept pace with DC workers in general. The median wage for all DC workers was $29.79 per hour in 2012, equal to $62,000 annually. While the median wage has jumped nearly $10 over a decade for all workers, the median wage has remained relatively flat for tipped workers. Unfortunately, DC falls into the bottom half of states when it comes to the tipped minimum wage.
The tipped wage was put into place to provide stable income for workers who rely on gratuities, which can fluctuate depending on the type of establishment you work for, the times you work, and various other factors, including the weather. Nationally, tipped workers have twice the poverty rate of the average worker and are more than three times as likely to rely on food stamps.
The coalition of business and labor groups, along with community, religious, and research organizations, in which DCFPI is a part, support the $11.50 wage plus indexing. We hope to work with the Council in the next week to include tipped workers as well.
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