Maryland Restaurant Workers

The fight

OFW is co-leading the Maryland coalition backing Baltimore City Councilman John Bullock’s bill to phase out the tipped subminimum wage, with statewide reintroduction planned for the 2027 legislative session. The campaign runs through Baltimore and Annapolis — building the legislator vote count, organizing worker testimony, and partnering with Maryland restaurant operators on the RAISE High Road program.

The D.C. proof point

Maryland workers cross into D.C. for shifts every day. They’ve watched what happened there:

• D.C. voters passed Initiative 82 in November 2022, ending the tipped subminimum wage by 74% to 26%.
• The restaurant lobby predicted closures, layoffs, and disaster. The industry data tells a more complicated story than either side claims — restaurant openings have outpaced closures and average hourly wages rose for both front-of-house and kitchen staff per Square POS data.
• What did happen: the National Restaurant Association and DC industry lobby ran a sustained pressure campaign to repeal I-82. In July 2025, the DC Council voted 7-5 to slow the phase-in — capping the tipped wage at 75% of the regular minimum wage by 2034 instead of fully eliminating the subminimum by 2027.
• I-82 was not repealed. Tipped workers in D.C. still earn substantially more under the law than they did before. But the lobby’s “this will be a disaster” framing was used to drag implementation backward.

The Maryland campaign uses every piece of that arc. The case for ending the tipped subminimum is supported by the data. The case for getting the implementation timeline right — and for building a coalition that can hold the line against the inevitable pressure campaign — is supported by what happened to I-82 after the win.

What a D.C. operator says

Andy Shallal — founder of Busboys & Poets, the D.C. restaurant institution — on what ending the subminimum tipped wage actually meant for D.C.:

“Having people rely solely on tips made it feel like a throwaway profession for so long.” — Andy Shallal, Busboys & Poets, D.C. (One Year After D.C. Initiative 82)

Who’s affected

The Maryland restaurant workforce is roughly two-thirds women and disproportionately Black, Latina, and immigrant. OFW’s reports document the wage gap by race within tipped occupations — even within the same restaurant.

What Maryland workers say

OFW surveys of Maryland tipped workers conducted November 2023 through April 2024 are decisive: 96% of 170 Maryland tipped workers surveyed in the first round, and 95% of 232 in the expanded sample, support the One Fair Wage policy — full minimum wage with tips on top. Documented in Maryland Workers Demand One Fair Wage and We Are Not On the Menu.

Three reports to start with