As restaurant house owners await the Seattle Metropolis Council to take care of excessive supply app charges, there’s one other problem dealing with their companies, studies the Seattle Instances: The minimal wage at eating places may go up by as a lot as $3 subsequent yr. That might be an enormous increase for a lot of low-wage staff, and likewise probably an existential risk for eating places that depend on these staff.
As of 2024, the minimal wage in Seattle is $19.97 an hour, except you utilize fewer than 500 workers, by which case you’re allowed to pay them $17.25, offered the distinction is made up by suggestions or medical advantages. In keeping with the Instances, this exception was carved out throughout negotiations over the minimal wage legislation handed practically a decade in the past, as then-Mayor Ed Murray tried to assemble as broad a coalition as doable for the groundbreaking wage hike.
When that legislation went into impact in 2015, everybody was referring to it as a “$15 minimal wage,” then seen as a excessive quantity. (Small companies then needed to pay staff an $11 minimal wage.) Since then, Seattle’s minimal wage has risen past that quantity as a result of the legislation ties it to inflation; Seattle’s Workplace of Labor Requirements will announce the 2025 minimal wage within the fall. However the provision that enables small companies to pay sure workers much less will expire subsequent yr except lawmakers take motion, which implies that along with the same old inflation-adjusted bump, smaller companies should pay their workers as a lot as giant ones do, they usually gained’t have the ability to issue suggestions into the equation.
This impacts the restaurant trade specifically as a result of only a few Seattle restaurant teams have greater than 500 workers. The exception is Ethan Stowell Eating places (ESR), which, the Instances notes, hit that mark final yr and responded by placing all staff, together with servers, on an hourly charge and including a service cost to checks.
“You both have to alter the mannequin subsequent yr or costs are going to go astronomically excessive or locations are going to have to shut down,” CEO Ethan Stowell advised the Instances.
The ESR instance offers a window into how the trade may change if this small enterprise exception expires. “The response amongst employees was blended” at ESR, the Instances writes. “For some, it was a optimistic, as a result of it meant they earned extra on sick days or when taking go away. Others give up.” This displays a divide amongst restaurant staff — some need their pay to be extra steady, whereas some servers and bartenders make good cash because of suggestions and may see their earnings drop in the event that they needed to develop into hourly staff. In the meantime, some clients actually, actually hate the service charges that have a tendency to come back with the hourly wage restaurant mannequin.
In keeping with the Instances, restaurant trade lobbyists have been asking the Metropolis Council to make the small enterprise exception within the minimal wage legislation everlasting. However it is a powerful ask. The Council additionally has different points to take care of, and a few members have conflicts of curiosity — Council President Sara Nelson is a co-founder of Fremont Brewing and nonetheless owns a portion of the corporate.
If politicians tried to tweak the minimal wage legislation, they’d additionally face opposition from labor teams. David Rolf, a former union president who helped negotiate the legislation within the first place, was blunt about this when he spoke to the Instances: “Undermining Seattle’s minimal wage legislation is political suicide for anybody who tries.”
