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 shy of overriding the mayor’s veto earlier that day, with a 30-19 tally that kept scheduled raises for tipped workers on track, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The result handed Johnson his third straight veto win in as many years, according to the outlet.

“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, per the New York Post (NYP). “I am boldly declaring that we need reparations in this city, and that’s why I’m funding it.” (RELATED: Brandon Johnson Says He’s Coordinating With Other Democrat Mayors To Thwart ICE)

Johnson made the comments while fielding a question about whether his Reparations Task Force complies with Illinois public meeting laws, according to the NYP. The mayor launched the panel in June 2024 with $500,000 in funding, and a city bus tour called “Repair Chicago” rolled out Thursday to gather accounts of what officials call systemic harm against Black residents.

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

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