Massachusetts ballot questions 2024: Question 5 on the tipped minimum wage – The Boston Globe

The ballot question would also allow tips to be pooled with workers who do not interact with customers directly, including cooks, bookkeepers, and other back-of-house staff.

A yes vote would raise the tipped minimum wage over five years with the first increase lifting the floor to $9.60 an hour next year. Employers that pay tipped workers at least the state minimum wage could then pool tips with all employees, if they choose. Massachusetts would become one of seven states without a tipped wage.

A no vote would keep the hourly tipped minimum wage at $6.75 — above the $2.13 federal minimum wage for tipped workers, but below the Massachusetts minimum wage of $15. Sharing tips with workers who do not talk to customers would not be permitted.

One Fair Wage, an advocacy organization lobbying for higher tipped wages nationwide, brought the ballot question to Massachusetts after similar campaigns in Michigan and Washington D.C. They have supported the campaign largely alone, spending roughly $1 million, along with support from fewer than two dozen local progressive groups and some restaurant employees.

Campaigning against them is a cadre of restaurateurs and trade groups, including the Massachusetts Restaurant Association and Mass Restaurants United. They believe raising the tipped minimum wage would deal businesses, already struggling with rising costs and the post-pandemic recovery, a catastrophic blow. Many restaurant employees themselves oppose the measure out of fear that it would reduce the tips they receive.

Proponents of Question 5 say that a $15 tipped minimum wage is a win for all. Eliminating the current system, they argue, would lessen financial instability for restaurant workers and save them from dependence upon customers’ generosity. And pooling tips with the entire workforce could be a boon for the lowest-paid employees.

Other places that implemented a higher minimum wage saw upticks in “restaurant job growth rates, small business growth rates, and tipping averages,” according to One Fair Wage. Research from Tufts University and University of Massachusetts Amherst has found that getting rid of the lower minimum wage for tipped workers, as the question suggests, actually raises wages overall for these workers — many of whom are low-income, women, or people of color.

“It’s time we end the injustice of the subminimum wage and create an industry that truly values and compensates its workers with dignity,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage.

The “No” camp fears that raising the tipped minimum wage will force restaurants to raise menu prices, or worse, close entirely.

Food and labor costs have risen astronomically since the pandemic began, pushing throngs of restaurants to the brink of survival. Many owners now believe the tipped wage measure would add to the burden. Should the question pass, businesses could pay an additional $18,000 in payroll per employee by 2029, according to calculations from Mass Restaurants United. (The UMass study found that business cost increases from the measure would be “modest.”)

And many restaurant staff worry the change would lead them to earn less money, too. Dozens told the Globe that American tipping culture is fraught already, and that customers would likely leave smaller tips if they knew workers’ wages were increasing. Some take issue, too, with One Fair Wage and believe the national group skirted the opinions of workers on the ground when debuting the measure in Massachusetts.

Opponents cite the history of the measure as proof. The Maine legislature restored the state’s lower minimum wage for tipped workers a year after it was eliminated in a similar ballot question, and the process of phasing out the tipped wage in D.C. has proven bumpy and shrank the size of the restaurant workforce.

Behind the battle for a $15 minimum wage

Hillary Clinton endorses raising minimum wage for tipped workers in Mass.

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Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_.