By Peter Currier
LOWELL — State Rep. Rodney Elliott was joined by local restaurant owners and staff outside Cobblestones Wednesday morning to endorse a vote against Question 5, a ballot measure that would raise the minimum wage for tipped restaurant servers.
If passed by the voters, Question 5 would require employers of tipped workers to incrementally raise their minimum wage to 100% of the state’s $15.50 minimum wage by Jan. 1, 2029. The current minimum wage for tipped workers in Massachusetts is $6.75 per hour. If an employer is paying all of its employees the state minimum wage, it would also be permitted to pool together the tips for all workers and distribute them evenly among all employees, even the non-tipped workers.
Standing outside Cobblestones, Elliott said he opposes Question 5 because it “would be a detriment to our businesses.”
“I stand with the restaurant owners, who are still recovering from some of the effects of COVID. I stand with the bartenders, and the waitresses and the waiters who want to be compensated for the service they provide,” said Elliott, referencing a common claim that good wait staff make more money with tips and a subminimum wage than they would with just a minimum wage.
Similar measures have passed in other, primarily western states, which Elliott and others said has proven costly to businesses.
“We’ve already seen the effects of what happens when this question passes, and I don’t want to see it happen in Massachusetts, I certainly don’t want to see it in Lowell,” said Elliott. “These restaurants cannot afford the increase in costs, they are looking at a 40% increase in payroll in the first year. How could restaurants that operate on the margins be able to sustain this?”
Cobblestones owner Scott Plath said “servers are not asking for this.”
“This is an outside group spreading misinformation,” said Plath. “The average wage for servers is over $20 an hour … Ask your servers if they are looking for a change in the law that will affect how they get paid, and will affect their bottom line and their pockets. They will tell you, ‘no.’”
At the gathering was Cobblestones waitress Lillian Patrylo, who has been working in the restaurant industry for six years.
“The reason I really enjoy this industry is because I think it’s an opportunity to make large wages when the job market is constantly weeding out people who don’t have degrees and weeding out people who have no experience,” said Patrylo. “This is a job where you can enter with no experience, get trained on the job, and make enough money to support a family.”
Patrylo said the servers frequently make between $20 to $35 an hour depending on the shift, well above the current minimum wage.
Kathy Turner, the owner of Turner’s Seafood in Melrose, said Question 5 is “a bad bill,” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“What will happen if this passes is you will lose your small independent restaurants across Massachusetts,” said Turner. “You’re going to lose jobs because restaurants make paper-thin margins. If you have to pay the servers more, and they are the highest paid people in the building right now, guess who doesn’t make any more money, the back of the house.”
The main proponent of Question 5 is One Fair Wage, a national nonprofit with a goal of raising the minimum base wages of tipped workers to match the actual minimum wage, with similar campaigns being run in a number of other states. In a statement Wednesday in response to last week’s sentencing of Stavros Papantoniadis, the owner of Stash’s Pizza in Boston, for multiple forced labor counts, One Fair Wage President Saru Jayaraman said the ballot question is meant to ensure workers are “protected from exploitation.”
“This case exposes the dark underbelly of an industry that preys on vulnerable workers, particularly immigrants, under a two-tiered wage system that leaves them at the mercy of abusive employers,” said Jayaraman. “This is why we are crisscrossing the state to improve working conditions for restaurant workers and campaigning for a Yes vote on Question 5.”
In the statement, OFW said “the current system forces workers to rely on tips to survive, allowing abusive employers to exploit loopholes and evade paying fair wages.”
OFW held an event at the State House in Boston Friday to rally support for Question 5 after receiving an endorsement from Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and other elected state officials. The rally was meant “to highlight the growing wage theft crisis in the Massachusetts restaurant industry and expose the corporate-backed anti-worker agenda of opponents fighting fair wages for tipped workers.”
Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll joined Elliott and other elected officials in opposing Question 5, arguing it would result in lower overall pay for tipped workers.
“We also are supporting our restaurant owners who believe this initiative will hurt small businesses and raise costs on customers,” they said in a joint statement Wednesday morning. “That’s why we ask voters to carefully consider the harm this question will have on our servers, restaurants, customers, and the Massachusetts economy – and vote No on 5.”
Another rally in opposition to Question 5 was held at the State House Wednesday morning, with 16 restaurant workers present to argue against the measure.
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