Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Connects Tipped Restaurant Wages To Slavery

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson invoked slavery Wednesday while defending the city’s phaseout of the tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers.

The Chicago City Council fell four votes short of overriding the mayor’s veto earlier in the day, with a 30-19 vote keeping planned raises for tipped workers on track, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The result gave Johnson his third straight veto victory in as many years, according to the outlet.

“You just saw the entire city council, in complete transparency, try to take away the salaries of the very people who are part of an industry linked to slavery and who are hiding from it,” Johnson said, according to the New York Post (NYP). “I boldly declare that we need repairs in this city, and that is why I am funding it. » (RELATED: Brandon Johnson says he’s coordinating with other Democratic mayors to thwart ICE)

Johnson made the comments while responding to a question about whether his reparations task force was complying with Illinois open meeting laws, according to the NYP. The mayor launched the panel in June 2024 with $500,000 in funding, and a bus tour of the city called “Repair Chicago” took place Thursday to gather testimony about what officials call systemic harm against Black residents.

The Employment Policy Institute says the wage plan is already hurting Chicago restaurants. “Mayor Johnson is doubling down on a policy that has proven to backfire on workers and the local restaurants they work for.” the group’s research director, Rebekah Paxton, said in a statement, according to FOX 32 Chicago. “Chicago’s economic data already shows this has been hurting the city’s restaurant industry for less than two years. It’s time for the city to stand with local workers and businesses and abandon this disastrous policy.”

The order requires restaurants to raise tipped workers’ base pay to the full minimum wage of $16.60 an hour by July 1, 2028, with increases of 8% each summer, WTTW News reported. Johnson presented tipped wages as “a vestige of slavery” from his 2023 mayoral campaign, according to the outlet.