Illinois Lawmakers discuss MASSIVE changes for Restaurants

Your local restaurants will be impacted directly if lawmakers in Illinois decide to pass a new bill that the Illinois Restaurant Association disagrees with. Here are the details...

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According to an article from NBC Chicago, servers in Illinois could be making minimum wage soon, as lawmakers discuss passing a bill that would eliminate the "subminimum" wage for tipped employees, in the article, they say...

"In Illinois, the minimum wage for 2024 rose to $14. The minimum wage for tipped employees sits at $8.40, with employers required to make up the difference if tips don't boost that pay rate to the standard minimum wage. The proposal mirrors one recently passed in Chicago, which raised the minimum wage for tipped workers from $9 to $15.80 per hour, though such employees could still get tips...The Illinois Restaurant Association said it "wholeheartedly" disagrees with the idea."

The article goes on to mention how the change in labor costs would make food prices rise as restaurants would fight to keep profits as high as possible, to read more about this proposed law, click here!

Is this the right thing to do?

I will say that I have never met a person who worked as a server who didn't do it for the tips. When I lived in Chicago the majority of my friends were servers and bartenders who did it purely because they could make a killing on tips. Does working at a good restaurant in Chicago equate to working at a corner spot in Quincy...No. Are there servers in the Quincy area or other small-town areas across the state that will benefit from this law? Yes. Are there servers who know they will be tipped way less, and it will hurt them? Yes.

I don't know if this law is the right thing to do or not, but I do know that if local restaurants have to increase prices it's not going to matter how much the server makes because these restaurants that are struggling already will close. And if restaurants are closing, who does that help?