Chicago mayor links restaurant industry to ‘slavery’ as tipped wage fight intensifies

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson linked the restaurant industry to “slavery” Wednesday as he defended his push to eliminate the tipped wage, doubling down after surviving a City Council effort to block the policy.

Johnson’s remarks came after the Chicago City Council failed to override his veto of a measure that would have halted the city’s phaseout of the subminimum wage for tipped workers — a policy set to raise base pay to the full minimum wage by 2028 that is opposed by restaurant owners who warn it could drive up prices and cut jobs.

He called on Chicagoans to “challenge city council not to do stuff like take wages away from Black and Brown people,” claiming that minorities living in Chicago primarily work in service industry jobs reliant on tips.

“You just watched the entire city council in transparency try to take wages away from the very people who are part of an industry that has its ties to slavery is hiding from that,” Johnson said. “I am boldly declaring that we need reparations in this city, and that’s why I’m funding it.”

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City aldermen voted last month to end the wage increase for tipped workers, but Johnson vetoed it.

Restaurant owners and associations have pushed back on the city’s phaseout of the subminimum wage, saying it will shrink their already tight profit margins. Chicago’s City Council failed to meet the 34-vote requirement to overturn the phaseout.

Johnson’s comments came in response to a question from a person who claimed that Johnson’s Reparations Task Force was not in compliance with Illinois state law, which mandates that all public bodies hold public meetings. Johnson denied the assertion that his task force, which he launched in June 2024, was not being transparent with the public.

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“I’m a black man in America calling for the reparations of black people,” Johnson said. “There is no hiding or escaping that. I’m taking a bold statement here.”

Johnson allotted $500,000 to the task force in 2024.

On Thursday, the task force and city kicked off a bus tour as part of “Repair Chicago,” a community engagement effort created to explore firsthand the “impacts of systemic harm faced by Black Chicagoans.”

A spokesperson from Johnson’s office doubled down on Johnson linking tipped wages to slavery, suggesting that it became common practice for “white employers in the South” following the Emancipation.

“Today, many Black workers, particularly women, continue to rely on tips and subminimum wages to support themselves and their families,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The institutionalized reliance on tipping remains a uniquely American phenomenon, and Mayor Johnson is proud to be a leader in the movement to ensure working people across the country receive the dignity and respect they deserve in the workplace, and have the ability to support themselves and their loved ones in a system that has historically denied them fair and stable wages.”