Labor organizations and advocates are calling for D.C. to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour — including for tipped workers.
Leaders of the ” DC Living Wage for All Campaign” said they’re filing an initiative to be on the November 2026 ballot. The initiative would raise minimum wage for all workers over several years. It would also eliminate the tip credit.
The move comes months after the D.C. Council partially repealed Initiative 82 to cap tipped wages at 75% of the full minimum wage by the year 2034. Restaurant servers and other tipped workers would have been required to make the standard minimum wage by 2027.
Labor leaders said the new measure is a way to “reverse the economic harm” caused by the Council’s decision.
“Families across all eight wards are facing surging rents, rising food costs, record transit expenses, and some of the highest child care costs in the nation. Wages have failed to keep pace, and the Council’s decision to overturn the will of the voters on Initiative 82 pushed thousands of workers back into poverty pay,” organizers of the initiative said in a news release. “While corporations post record profits, too many workers in the District are still working multiple jobs to survive, falling behind on rent and loan payments, and living paycheck to paycheck under the nation’s highest cost of living.”
Angry protests erupted when the D.C. Council passed its compromised amendment to Initiative 82 in July.
“Worker after worker kept talking to me when they heard that the D.C. Council was going to take their pay raise, which ended up happening. And I remember my workers looked at me and they said, ‘They don’t realize what a two-worker pay raise they just stripped from me meant.’ Because everything is going up. But not their wages,” one employer said Monday at an event to announce the DC Living Wage for All Campaign.
The new ballot initiative could become a key litmus test in D.C.’s mayoral race.
Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George recently announced her plans to run for mayor. She voted against the amendment to Initiative 82 that limited wage increases.
On July 1, D.C.’s regular minimum wage rose to $17.95 per hour. Currently, tipped employees are supposed to get paid $10 an hour plus any tips they receive.
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