Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks at a press conference at City Hall on Jan. 15, 2025. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

The City Council on Wednesday voted to freeze the city’s tipped wage escalator, reversing an ordinance put in place almost three years ago, but Mayor Brandon Johnson has vowed to veto it.

Ald. Samantha Nugent (39) called for the measure to be discharged from the council rules committee and substituted it. After failed attempts by some alderpeople to table the matter or refer it to the workforce development committee, the council passed Nugent’s measure 30-18. 

The tally is below. 

Johnson said at a news conference after the vote he would veto the measure and said the city can protect workers and businesses alike. 

“No other mayor has prioritized small businesses the way I have, while at the same time, no other mayor has ensured that working people can have a livable wage and can live with dignity,” Johnson said. “We don't have to pit these groups against one another.” 

Last spring, Ald. Bennett Lawson (44) introduced the ordinance to freeze the tipped wage at where it was last May — undoing the One Fair Wage ordinance — but his ordinance got stuck in the Committee on Committees and Rules, so a statutory tipped wage increase went into effect last July.  

Nugent’s substitute (SO2025-0017549) is basically the same but accounts for the current tipped wage, which is $12.62 an hour or 76 percent of the $16.60 an hour minimum wage. It proposes freezing it at that current level.   

Chicago’s One Fair Wage ordinance (SO2023-0002995), passed in October 2023, was one of the mayor’s first legislative victories. Under it, the gap between the tipped wage and minimum wage will shrink by eight percent every July until it becomes equal to Chicago’s minimum wage on July 1, 2028. That phased-in process began in 2024.  

Related: Alderperson proposes ordinance to pause elimination of tipped wage, but opponents warn it would cause hospitality workers to ‘suffer’  

Proponents of freezing the tipped wage escalator have argued that the increases over the past two years have hurt businesses and led to restaurant closures. 

Nugent said the law already mandates that tipped workers receive the minimum wage if the combination of their tips and the subminimum wage fall short of what they’d be making on the minimum wage.  

“This legislation will help protect servers and back of the house jobs and keep small independent restaurants operating,” Nugent said.  

“It's okay to admit we were wrong in this body,” Ald. Anthony Beale (9) said. “It's okay to admit that something happened and it's affecting the businesses. Well, we have a right to correct that.”  

The mayor’s office has cast doubts on those arguments, saying the city has recorded an increased retail food establishment license renewal rate in the last several years — a figure that was 83 percent in 2025. Additionally, Johnson said the city has seen a net gain of 1,400 licenses since the first tipped wake hike under the ordinance in July 2024 and an increase in hospitality sector employment. 

“Despite claims to the contrary, the data is clear. Chicago's restaurant industry is growing,” Johnson said. 

Though he wasn’t on the council at the time, Ald. Anthony Quezada (35) told the council he attended the meeting where the ordinance was passed. 

“The vote that this council took [in 2023] was a victory and a dignified victory for workers,” Quezada said. “At a time where we're living in a second Gilded Age, where billionaires and corporations are making record profits, we can't pay people a living wage — the bare minimum — which is already a starvation wage. This minimum wage should be $20 an hour. That's what this council should be talking about, not rolling back wages for workers.” 

The Illinois Restaurant Association said 496 restaurants closed during the first half of 2025, and by the end of last year the city’s full-service restaurants had 7,800 fewer jobs than before the COVID-19 pandemic. The association said it surveyed restaurants and found most have had to raise prices or cut staff to stay afloat.

The previously seldom-used veto would be Johnson’s third, and 34 alderpeople would need to vote to overturn it.