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The 2022 Midterms had plenty of issues on the ballot. In Washington, D.C., one of them was the question of the tipped minimum wage. Initiative 82 moved to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers from $5.35 up a dollar annually until it reaches D.C.'s current minimum wage of $16.10 per hour. According to Eater, 74% of voters supported Initiative 82, which will go into effect next year.
The minimum wage for non-tipped workers will need to be paid to all workers by 2027. It was a popular initiative among voters because it is believed that increasing the minimum wage would increase pay for workers and prevent wage theft. Of course, there were detractors of the initiative as well, including smaller and independent restaurants. Some workers also worried they would make less through the hourly minimum wage than through the tip structure.
"I'm ashamed to say in 2018 I was anti-77, and then I did some traveling and talked to bartenders in California, Oregon … and all of them unanimously preferred not having tip credit and making a real minimum wage underneath all their tips," Maxwell Halwa, a bartender and organizer, told DCist. "And it made me realize I'd been lied to."
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