Lawmakers in the nation’s capital approved a $15-an-hour minimum wage on Tuesday, joining numerous other cities and the states of California and NY in mandating pay raises for retail, restaurant and service-industry workers.
Advertisement
Since the District of Columbia adopted an aggressive plan to force business owners to pay low-skilled workers more, almost half of the city’s employers report they’ll reduce worker hours or fire employees.
In a victory for local and national labor unions, Washington joins the ranks of cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle in raising wages for primarily lower-income workers in restaurants, retail and other service industries. A similar percentage (37 percent) reported that they would very likely reduce employees’ hours or their hours of operation to offset the additional costs of the minimum wage increase.
Advocates had been collecting signatures for the ballot initiative, however, and now at least two advocacy groups are upset by what they see as a missed opportunity to level the playing field between tipped and non-tipped workers.
The bill would raise the wage gradually until it hits $15 in 2020.
Once approved, the USA capital will join California and NY in making $15 the hourly minimum. A second vote would likely come in July, just before the Council goes on its two-month summer recess. Under the proposal, future increases would be tied to inflation. In the same time frame, the base pay for tipped workers will also increase from $2.77 an hour to $5 an hour.
In addition, about a fifth of the businesses questioned said they’d simply relocate operations to nearby Arlington, Virginia, where the minimum wage remains at the federal standard of $7.25 an hour.
The District’s current hourly minimum wage is $10.50, and it was scheduled to go up to $11.50 next month under a law enacted in 2014.
Kennard Ray, a spokesman for the group, said he was disappointed that D.C. lawmakers had “chosen again to leverage some low-wage workers against others” to make a deal on minimum-wage law.
The 13-member council will hold a first vote on a measure to boost the minimum hourly wage to $15 by 2020.
Advertisement
This year’s debate over wages centered on how to guarantee minimum-wage compensation for workers who rely on tips.
