Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
Voters resoundingly rejected a ballot proposition that would have amended the Arizona Constitution to give businesses the right to pay tipped workers 25% less than the minimum wage.
With nearly half of expected votes tallied, Proposition 138 was losing in a landslide, with more than 75% of votes against it.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Under current Arizona law, employers can pay tipped workers $3 less than minimum wage. If the proposed constitutional amendment were in place today, businesses could pay workers $3.58 less than the current minimum wage of $14.35.
And because the minimum wage is indexed to inflation, it increases every January. That means the constitutional amendment would have increased the amount companies could avoid paying their workers each year.
“Arizona voters have spoken, though these are not the results we wanted,” Steve Chucri, President and CEO of the Arizona Restaurant Association, said in a statement Tuesday night. “While it appears Prop 138 has come up short, I am proud of our efforts that saw the competing initiative knocked off the ballot. We will remain vigilant and ready to oppose future legislative, local or ballot efforts that seek to harm our industry and its workers.”
Prop. 138 was originally designed to counter a ballot initiative backed by labor advocates that would have sharply increased the minimum wage and scrapped existing laws allowing restaurants and bars to pay most tipped workers less than the minimum wage. But that initiative was barred from the ballot after restaurant owners successfully challenged the signatures its backers filed to qualify for the November election.
Even though it would have cut the amount tipped workers received in wages, the Arizona Restaurant Association, which drafted the measure and spearheaded the campaign to support it, dubbed the measure the “Tipped Workers Protection Act.” The restaurant trade group was supported by an astroturfed campaign led by conservative groups, similar to what happened in other states that were attempting to increase the minimum wage.
Advocates of the measure pointed to Washington, D.C., as an example of how a change in minimum wage could impact restaurants. In 2022, the District passed a measure that guaranteed tipped workers the minimum wage. The area saw an astroturfed campaign against the change led by a conservative group that pushed op-eds and quotes — often from local servers — to mainstream media outlets.
Astroturfing refers to a practice in which a campaign is made to appear as a grassroots effort when in reality it is orchestrated or managed by a public relations firm or a well connected political player.
The local campaign also used the name “Save Our Tips” which was used by the campaign in D.C..
Similar tactics emerged in the Prop. 138 campaign. In September, the Arizona Republic published an op-ed by a local server promoting Prop. 138. What wasn’t disclosed, however, is that the author also was present at the committee meeting earlier this year wearing a “Save Our Tips” t-shirt, and wrote a statement urging voters to support Prop. 138 in the Arizona Secretary of State publicity pamphlet that was paid for by Save Our Tips AZ.
She works at a restaurant that is managed by Upward Projects, which has donated to the ARA and similar organizations.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.