Push to slow increase of Chicago's subminimum wage fails

The hourly pay of Chicago’s tipped workers will rise again to match the cost of living after the City Council failed to override Mayor Brandon Johnson’s third veto.

One month after freezing the phaseout of the subminimum wage at 76% to throw an economic lifeline to struggling Chicago restaurants, the Illinois Restaurant Association and its City Council allies did not pick up a single convert. Wednesday’s vote to override Johnson’s veto was 30-19 — four votes short.

Johnson has now issued three vetoes in three years and made all of them stick. The first killed a snap curfew ordinance. The second killed a proposed ban on the sale of most hemp-derived products in Chicago, and the third killed efforts to freeze the hourly pay of restaurant servers, bartenders and other tipped workers at 76% of the minimum wage.

It was a sorely needed political victory for a mayor who has struggled to pass his last two city budgets and had a City Council majority reject his corporate head tax and pass an alternative budget over his objections.

“It’s a victory for working people who need to have fair wages so they can afford to live in the city and stay in Chicago,” senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee said Wednesday. “At a time when people are struggling to make ends meet, lowering people's wages by potentially thousands of dollars a year would be counterproductive, and the mayor has advocated that we not do that.”

A fundamental axiom in politics is never to call for a vote that can't be won. Proponents of the freeze ignored that advice and tried for an override even though they knew they had no chance of succeeding.

“It’s to look restaurant owners in the eye and say, 'We fought for you and we’re going to continue to fight for you and say, just so we’re clear, these people over here don’t care about you,’“ said 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea, whose Far Southwest Side ward borders suburbs with restaurants that pay lower wages. “Maybe that puts a little pressure on people to move away from the mayor.”

Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia targeted nine alderpersons who voted against the freeze despite having heavy concentrations of restaurants in their wards, in hopes of persuading at least four of them to change their votes and override the mayor’s veto.

None changed their votes.

When he issued the veto, Johnson argued that there has “never been a right time ever to roll back the rights and gains of women — particularly women of color,” but it’s "especially tone deaf and disturbing” now in the midst of an affordability crisis.

“Families are struggling under the weight of rising costs, rent, groceries, child care — and wages have not kept up with these rising costs. At a time when people are fighting just to stay afloat, you had individuals who claim to stand up for working people, as Democrats take money out of the pockets of working people,” the mayor said.

The Illinois Restaurant Association has spent the last year building support to stop the five-year phaseout and freeze the so-called “tip credit” at 24% of Chicago’s minimum wage, which now stands at $16.60 an hour.

Without the freeze, tipped workers now paid $12.62 an hour would receive a raise to 16% of Chicago’s minimum wage. That amount is reset every July 1 to match the cost of living.

With the freeze, they would still receive a raise, but it would be capped at 76% of whatever the minimum hourly wage turns out to be.

Restaurants are mandated by law to make up the difference for servers whose hourly pay and tips do not equal the minimum wage. Economic Development Committee Chair Gilbert Villegas (36th) argued that “99.9%” of Chicago restaurants are already complying with that law.

Villegas argued that Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has reversed field on the issue, and that Chicago should do the same at a time when skyrocketing property taxes and costly city mandates like paid time off and sick time have been “piled on” to Chicago restaurants that have been told to “figure it out.”

“They have figured it out — by reducing hours and staff,” Villegas said.

Ninth Ward Ald. Anthony Beale urged his colleagues to “do the right thing, not the politically correct thing.”

That prompted 26th Ward Ald. Jessie Fuentes to say, “Making sure that people can afford their rents and pay their bills and put food in their refrigerator is not a politically correct thing to do. It’s a human thing to do. It’s a just thing to do. It’s the right thing to do.”