AsAs the Chicago City Council considers an ordinance to eliminate the tipped minimum wage for workers, Michael Roper, the owner of Hopleaf in Andersonville, knows his business model, which includes tipped servers and bartenders, could be on the verge of some serious changes.
The council met on Thursday and will now schedule hearings to debate the topic. Still, the city appears poised to approve a measure at its second October meeting that would abolish the law allowing restaurant owners to count tips toward the difference between a $9 hourly wage and Chicago’s standard minimum wage of $15.80 per hour with tips.
While Roper and the rest of Chicago don’t know how the ordinance would impact restaurants, they can look for guidance in other parts of the country, like California and Washington, D.C., where elected officials have abolished a tipped minimum wage. Chicago’s ordinance, which would go into effect in two years, would be a big win for the progressives who backed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s win in April.
“We’re not sure what we’re going to do until it really happens,” Roper says. He predicts that...
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Iran had agreed not to execute eight women protesters, while Iranian officials and the judiciary denied any such executions had been planned and des...