On whose side is the DC Council – with campaign bankrollers, or the people of DC? The lower minimum wage in the District of Columbia is currently just $2.77 per hour. Tipped workers in DC earning this extremely low wage are disproportionally women and mothers. Meanwhile, thousands of DC residents have signed a petition to have One Fair Wage – the elimination of the lower wage for tipped workers — placed on the November ballot to be voted on by the people of DC. When Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Council, including Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs Chair Vincent Orange, passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, they struck a deal with the the restaurant industry lobby to cut tipped workers out of the deal, leaving them at $5 an hour and unable to earn a family-sustaining wage from their employers. They also took away the right for DC voters to democratically vote for One Fair Wage in this November’s ballot. Other DC Council members who supported Orange’s efforts to exclude Restaurant Industry Political Contributions tipped workers from the minimum wage increase have also benefitted from the restaurant industry’s largesse. to Vincent Orange and Other DC Council Members YEAR OF CITY COUNCIL RESTAURANT INDUSTRY Vincent Orange seems to take pride in keeping wages for restaurant workers low. This should CONTRIBUTION MEMBER LOBBY CONTRIBUTIONS come as no surprise. Since 2006, Vincent Orange has received nearly $15,000 in political 2006-2016 Vincent Orange $14,650 contributions from the food and beverage industry lobby, with 80% of that coming from 2007-2016 Yvette Alexander $4,200 restaurants.1 Orange is no stranger to ‘pay to play’ politics; in 2012 the Councilmember was 2016 LaRuby May $1,750 caught interfering with a District health department investigation on behalf of a campaign donor who runs a produce shop.2 District health inspectors found a rodent infestation amongst other 2015-2016 Brandon Todd $1,750 sanitary problems at Sam Wang Produce, a business which had contributed $19,000 to Orange’s 2011-2016 David Grosso $8,095 various campaigns. Orange also received $3000 this year from Tony Cheng, a restaurateur who 2003-2016 Jack Evans $34,998 pled guilty to bribery in 2014.3 The National Restaurant Association THE The National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) is one of the nation’s most powerful corporate lobbying powerhouses, OTHER playing a leading role opposing increases to the minimum wage, earned sick time, and other policies that would benefit NRA millions of working people and their families. The NRA has devoted particular energy to excluding tipped workers — more than two-thirds of whom are women4 — from minimum-wage laws. Due to the NRA’s efforts it has been 25 years since the last change in the federal minimum wage for tipped employees, when it was increased from $2.09 to just $2.13 per hour in 1991. In 1996, under the leadership of Herman Cain, the NRA negotiated with Congress to support an increase to the full minimum wage as long as the tipped minimum wage remained frozen at $2.13.5 The restaurant industry lobby’s influence dates back more than a century, when it first lobbied to have tipped restaurant workers — then mostly former slaves — not receive a wage at all from their employer, and instead to rely on customer tips. Thus, the very concept of the lower minimum wage for tipped workers has origins in slavery.6 1 All campaign contribution reports obtained from the District of Columbia – Office of Campaign Finance. Available at https://efiling.ocf.dc.gov/ContributionExpenditure. 2 Freed, Benjamin R. (January 15, 2013). Orange Pushed Health Department to Keep Infested Produce Store Open, dcist. Available at http://dcist.com/2013/01/orange_pushed_health_department_to.php. 3 Alexander, Keith L. (April 16, 2014). Chinatown restaurateur, son plead guilty to trying to bribe officias for taxi licenses, Washington Post. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/chinatown-restaurateur-son- plead-guilty-to-trying-to-bribe-officials-for-taxi-licenses/2014/04/16/50fdebc8-c5a2-11e3-bf7a-be01a9b69cf1_story.html. 4 American Community Survey (ACS) 2014, U.S. Census Bureau (calculations by ROC United using Ruggles et al., Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 (machine-readable database), Minnesota PopulationCenter (2010)). 5 Liddle, A. (June 24, 1996.) Associations urge Senate to retain wage provisions. Nation’s Restaurant News. 6 Jayaraman, Saru. (2016). Forked: A New Standard for American Dining. Oxford University Press..