DC bartender says keeping Initiative 82 ensures financial stability

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said a voter-approved measure known as Initiative 82 needs to be repealed because restaurant and bar owners say the higher wages for servers and bartenders are costing them business.

But a longtime bartender said he and others in the hospitality industry may think about a new career if the popular law is repealed.

Max Hawla, a bartender at the Grand Duchess in Adams Morgan, has been in the industry for over a decade, loves his job and the interaction with people. He said Initiative 82 has brought him and others in the hospitality industry some financial security.

“I am definitely more comfortable since (Initiative) 82 passed. I have a higher hourly wage, and my tips have stayed the same,” he told WTOP. “The industry needs more financial stability for its working people, $5 an hour underneath your tips is not a lot.”

In 2022, voters by a three-to-one margin approved the measure to end the tipped minimum wage and create one wage scale for workers regardless of their industry. The measure increased the tipped minimum wage from $5.35 an hour to match the minimum wage of non-tipped employees in 2027.

Hawla said life before Initiative 82 was approved was tough.

“It creates the system where people are really having to clamor for tips,” he said.

Hawla said if Bowser’s goal to repeal the measure wins approval, he and many others in the food service industry may give serious consideration to another line of work.

The group One Fair Wage, which pushed the referendum that overwhelmingly passed in 2022, also put out a blistering statement on the measure, calling the mayor’s action a stunning betrayal of D.C. workers and democracy.

Hawla’s also not buying the industry’s claim that 40% of restaurants and bars have considered closing because of high labor costs.

“The restaurant lobby is really fabricating this narrative about all these restaurant closures,” he said. “Service charges are the decision of a business owner and the restaurant lobby wants to create this boogeyman out of service charges.”

The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington also called on the D.C. Council to repeal Initiative 82, citing that between May 2023 — when the tipped minimum wage rose from just over $5 to $10 — and August 2024, job growth stalled and over 1,800 cuts were made at full-service restaurants, according to data from the National Restaurant Association.

WTOP’s John Domen and Ciara Wells contributed to this report.

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