Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando (D - At-Large) introduced a bill today that would eliminate tipped minimum wages in the county by 2028. Restaurant servers, bartenders and other tipped service workers currently can be paid less than the County's minimum wage, because they theoretically will achieve the minimum wage amount through customer tips. Jawando's bill, which is also supported by Councilmember Kristin Mink (D), would phase out the tipped minimum wage over the next five years, and require restaurant owners to pay all staff the current County minimum wage. His U.S. Senate campaign is touting the bill as the latest example of Jawando's progressive leadership on the Council, at a time when his leading progressive opponent, Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, is under fire from a new Intercept article that raises doubts about her past positions on crime and civil liberties issues.
“Even while running a high-stakes and fast-paced campaign for the U.S. Senate, Will is continuing to fight each and every day for his constituents in Montgomery County and embodying the core message of this campaign: to build a shared prosperity that lifts everybody up, no matter who you are or where you come from," Jawando's campaign communications director Benny Stanislawski said in a statement today. "Today’s bill is a perfect example of this, and his tried and true approach to public service. From successfully passing historic rent stabilization, to a pilot guaranteed income program, and community-informed policing in Montgomery County, Will is without a doubt the most effective legislator in the race. Today’s bill will likely become law and completely reshape the lived experience of countless working-class residents of the county."
Similar bills and laws in other jurisdictions have been highly-controversial and divisive. Restaurant owners fear their already-slim profit margins getting thinner, having to boost the wages they pay employees directly by more than $10 an hour each. Some servers and bartenders, who say they now regularly earn more than minimum wage via tips, have even opposed similar laws elsewhere. Their concern has been that word of the law - and the new service charges that restaurants add to customer tabs in the wake of their passage - will encourage customers to cut back or eliminate tipping altogether. Jawando does not believe this will be the case, but says he is proposing a second bill that would ensure service charges go to restaurant workers, rather than to the restaurant owners.
20 comments:
Someone who's never held a real job in his life, (like Barry), wants to lecture businesses how to run their business. Liberals should try working in the real world before declaring policy which will likely lead to jobs lost.
Don't do it folks (vote for him that is). You'll be sorry.
...who is Barry? Post your linkedin and let's compare it to Jawando's.
Did Jawando ever explain the FTA in Baltimore District Court outside of the 14-month old dog-ate-my-homework excuse of paying the fines?
@ 2:07 AM - Please explain how eliminating the Tipped Sub-Minimum wage "will likely lead to jobs lost". Unemployment in Montgomery County is currently below 2%.
We just won't tip right? As long as food prices don't go up more than 15-20% as a result of this bill, it will be a wash for most people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/ending-tipped-wage-hurts-restaurant-workers/
OMG! This explains a lot re: libthink.
Just maybe assuming your 2 percent number is accurate (it'd not, btw) your argument is pre, coting a posterous. The waitstaff person is out of his/her job, the restaurant owner loses that aspect, the prices naturally go up, more and more consequences.
Citing a nonsensical canard, probably a chapter in Alinsky's book?
My Taylor Swift earworm of the day has been activated. Thanks you nutjobs.
@ 7:25 PM -
"Warren Thompson is president and chairman of Thompson Hospitality", a restaurant franchisee owning several hundred restaurants.
@12:15 So he would actually know.
Would have asked Julie Su, (acting Secretary of Labor), but she's busy defending her 31-Billion dollar unemployment payout of fraudulent claims from criminals in CA on her watch.
@8:34 Thank you for explaining the supposed problem. Because a person makes a decent wage, the shop owner then needs to stop charging the market amount for food, and raises prices to keep getting the same profit margin. Your post is exactly the dumb and frankly stupid argument against paying people appropriately.
Now, for a moment, let's have some sense. Let's say the market says they will pay $5 for a hamburger. And instead of .50 per hamburger the provider has to pay 1.00 per hamburger for labor costs. Do you think that is so horrible. What's actually happening is the provider raises prices by 3.00 to pay the burger executives.
You blame the workers making $15/hr instead of the executives making $29M/year.
Wake up, you've got capitalism on the brain and Trump ramming nonsense down your throat and can't think straight. Wake up.
Are all jobs meant to be life supporting? No job is a stepping stone? What happened to kids and summer jobs, students working their way thru school?
And you so blinded to think these small restaurateurs are raking in big bucks?
Let's wait and see what the ramifications are. I bet waitstaff loses out in the long run. Plus.now they lose out on long overlooked declaration of income. Good waitstaff.in successful places pull in some coin. Mediocrity now, as always, will prevail. Re working for rich people: I'd much rather.
6:35 loves to bloviate about how they think businesses work when the closest they've ever been to management is ordering from a menu.
Newsflash, restaurant margins are thin and maximizing daily covers is always one of the goals so competition with other restaurants is day to day. Tipping wages allow for the best servers to earn top dollar through outstanding service while raising the wage actually discourages larger tips for good service as some of the value is lost and is more akin to collective distribution of all the tips which doesn't give any incentive to stand out.
Explaining this to a socialist wannabe is wasted breath as they're ideologically blocked from logic but others may want to know.
@2:02 - And she's "Acting" because a crazy, unqualified MAGA, ex-football coach, is holding up the countries progress, simply because he wants to dominate women's rights.
Actually 7:33, she's acting because she's incompetent & corrupt like a majority of democrats and your TDS is gloriously living in your mind rent-free.
The other thing that is lost on 6:35 regarding the general minimum wage is that once everything costs more, the "raise" is lost though devaluation so it has to be raised again. This is not a zero-sum-gain but emotionally describing $0.50 as "not so horrible" really misses the point of the big picture but illustrates the failure of public education to think.
In socialist utopia, the rivers are filled with chocolate and the trees bear candy gum drops. In the real world, you have Venezuela where people have been eating zoo animals. Take the blinders off and go back to school.
I don’t know any restaurant owner making $29 million per year.
Ireland is a pretty interesting example.
Workers are paid more.
You often order at the bar, but pay no tip for that.
For table service, tip is less, maybe 10 pct if you’re happy.
It’s pretty efficient, but shows tipping will be reduced.
Funny, that's the system at Manan, or whatever that is... just went there yesterday. If you remove all the 'quaint European accents,' the quaint bike with the baskets and hanging ivy its an 'order at the counter' and go sit (with one huge 'quaint family table' in the middle, too). Its unclear who does the table bussing and where one is expected to tip. I bet the waitstaff would prefer our American 'old days' of finding cash tips under the plates.
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