A question on the state ballot asking voters to decide whether to raise the state minimum wage paid to tipped workers to $15 an hour failed, with 64 percent voting no compared with the 36 percent voting yes.
It will be a while before the topic of higher wages returns to the Bay State, but the organization behind the push, One Fair Wage, will continue its work in Massachusetts as well as nationwide.
“Connecticut will be running a campaign next year, and New York is in the middle of building a campaign,” said Grace McGovern, a lead worker organizer who is also a tipped worker in Boston. “I am absolutely planning on continuing to fight.”
The question didn’t fail everywhere in Massachusetts. It passed in Cambridge, with 64 percent of votes in favor, and Somerville, where 59 percent of votes were in favor.
One Fair Wage does work in Rhode Island and Maine, as well as in Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, D.C., Colorado, Maryland, Arizona, Michigan, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. In Illinois, it successfully raised the minimum wage for tipped employees in Chicago.
McGovern hopes someday Massachusetts, the second most expensive state to live in behind Hawaii, will be able to do the same.
“We were driven by the knowledge that we all could have a better world, and by the belief that we all deserve that, and I don’t think that’s going anywhere, despite the result,” McGovern said.
Ballot Question 5 would have increased the minimum hourly wage an employer must pay a tipped worker gradually from the current rate to the state minimum wage of $15 by 2029. As it stands, tipped workers are paid $6.75 by their employers as long as their wages plus tips amount to at least $15 an hour. If they don’t, employers must make up the difference.
The proposed law also would have let employers, after paying workers an hourly wage that is at least the state minimum wage, combine all tips for distribution among all workers, including nontipped back-of-house staff such as cooks and dishwashers.
Restaurant associations opposed
The No on 5 movement was backed by the Massachusetts Restaurant Association and Gov. Maura Healey. It warned that if restaurants have to pay their employees more, they could need to cut staff or struggle to stay open, and prices will go up for diners. They argued that tipped workers don’t want a tip pool because they don’t want to make less money than they’re used to.
“Servers and bartenders are the ones that are facing forward, serving guests and earning those tips. Why would they want to share their tips with nonservice staff?” said Jessica Muradian, director of government affairs for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association.
If the measure had passed, it would have been a huge blow to an industry that still hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic, she said.
“We said, if you want to know how your servers and bartenders feel, ask them,” Muradian said. “Workers came out in the droves, they held rallies, they organized. Massachusetts restaurant staff said this is what’s best for us; we don’t need someone from out of state coming into our state and telling us what’s best for us and for our industry.”
“Folks from Massachusetts who are servers and bartenders here have been raising families, buying houses, putting kids through college,” Muradian said.
One Fair Wage pushes
Others in the industry do think an increased minimum wage is best. McGovern said passing the measure would have been “the right thing to do” and “the right step forward.”
“I think the two-tiered wage system is a really outdated way of discriminating against certain workers, and it unfortunately leads to the most vulnerable of our workers being further exploited,” McGovern said.
She noted the high number of employees from marginalized and minority communities. “The restaurant industry is the largest employer of single mothers and of formerly incarcerated individuals,” McGovern said. “We have a huge number of immigrant workers in the kitchens, and 70 percent of the entire industry is women.”
Like McGovern, Marco de Laforcade, who works as a bartender at Birds of Paradise in Brighton, supported raising the minimum wage for tipped workers.
“I believe that we need to fight for the entire working class, and I recognize that the Question 5 proposal wouldn’t have solved all problems, but it certainly would have been a step up for service workers to be on more equal footing,” said de Laforcade, who described themselves as a socialist.
Restaurant owners campaign hard
A bit of research was all de Laforcade needed to support Yes on 5.
“I looked into systems where people in the service sector get paid a standard wage with tips on top, and I found out that on average, in places with those kinds of systems, the poverty rate for service workers is noticeably lower, there’s more consistency in their pay, I even saw that sexual harassment is down by half,” de Laforcade said.
McGovern attributed the loss of the ballot measure in large part to restaurant owners pushing the No on 5 campaign on their employees and patrons.
The National Restaurant Association has more than 40,000 members representing nearly 500,000 eateries nationwide, and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association has 18,000 member restaurants. Both opposed the ballot measure and were able to employ a wider campaign than One Fair Wage, which McGovern called “grassroots.”
“Every member restaurant was printing out ‘No on 5’ posters and banners and hanging them in their restaurants, printing them on check holders, making servers wear T-shirts,” McGovern said.
She suggested that this barrage of No on 5 paraphernalia affected the public’s understanding of the issue and prevented employees from going against the status quo.
“I think a lot of people were making the false connection of seeing servers wearing No on 5 T-shirts at work and thinking they must want me to vote this way, whereas we’ve heard servers saying ‘No, I just have to wear this T-shirt or otherwise I’m out of uniform,’” McGovern said. “If your boss gives everyone T-shirts and they’re adamant about people wearing them … you need your job, you’re going to suck it up and wear the T-shirt.”
At work, de Laforcade found themselves “definitely in the minority.”
“Most of my co-workers voted no on the question,” they said. “I think that some of it was the prevalence of the propaganda coming from the restaurant industry. I think the MRA played a really big part in making the situation more confusing and spreading around things that weren’t true, like that servers would be making less money or that businesses would be closing on a massive scale.”
Though McGovern acknowledged the validity of the concerns for working people, opposition to 5 feels to her like something else. “The workers who have made decent livings for themselves in the industry were not willing to see a change in order to help out other people,” McGovern said.
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“It warned that if restaurants have to pay their employees more, they could need to cut staff or struggle to stay open, and prices will go up for diners” – I’m sorry, but if paying your workers fairly is going to tank your business, you suck at running a business.
I’ve also heard the argument that if patrons know the worker is getting a fair wage, they’re going to tip less. First up, don’t assume I’m a weird tightwad just because you are, restaurant owner. I do not tip based on what other money I think the person may or may not be getting.
And in making that argument, you are acknowledging that tips are completely up to the whims of the patron and good tips, or any tips, are not guaranteed under any circumstance. You can go above-and-beyond as a server or bartender and get no tip at all.
It was disappointing to see so many of the owners of local bars and restaurants I’ve spent many, many hundreds of dollars at over the years reveal themselves to basically be union busting scum. I know that workers were bullied and peer-pressured into not standing up for their best interests.
“The workers who have made decent livings for themselves in the industry were not willing to see a change in order to help out other people.”
Yup. And this kind of small-minded self-interest, well, kills my appetite.