Earlier this month, over a hundred local employees filed into a Maryland Senate Finance Committee hearing between shifts – pleading with state lawmakers to preserve the existing tip credit system.
Despite such a cold reception to a policy that’s been reintroduced by progressive lawmakers for years, House Delegate Adrian Boafo had a hot take: circumvent the traditional deliberative lawmaking process entirely, and try to send the measure to the public ballot instead.
Del. Boafo pulled his own bill to eliminate the tip credit just days before a scheduled hearing on Valentine’s Day – one of the biggest nights of the year for restaurant industry employees. Instead, Boafo announced he would file a constitutional amendment – which would eventually have to be passed by a public vote at the ballot box.
Activists claim “the people need to decide” on this measure that has failed at multiple attempts. Yet actual employees who stand to lose their jobs and lucrative tip earnings have been telling Maryland legislators for years: tipping is not a broken system, and the tip credit does not need to be changed.
Here’s a quick history of how employees have led the fight to save the tip credit and tipping in Maryland:
- In 2019, a $15 minimum wage bill was amended to leave out any changes to the tip credit system after employees expressed concerns about negative impacts on their jobs and income.
- In Spring 2023, a bill to eliminate the state tip credit died in the Senate, never even receiving a committee vote, after employees turned out with the same concerns.
- In October 2023, Boafo’s own district, Prince George’s County, saw local tipped employees turn out again in protest of eliminating the county’s tip credit system. County lawmakers, including the bill’s sponsor Ed Burroughs, voted unanimously to table the bill following the public hearing.
- Later in October 2023, Montgomery County tipped employees urged local lawmakers to save the existing tip credit system. The local proposal was withdrawn earlier this year without even reaching a County Council work session to vote on the bill.
Getting the public involved in a hotly debated policy issue is often noble. But the people most directly by attempts to eliminate the state tip credit have been active and vocal for over five years.
State lawmakers should continue to listen to the employees that would actually be affected by eliminating the tip credit in Maryland – not out-of-state activists who want to push policy regardless of the cost.