After a months-long public campaign that began shortly after Mayor Brandon Johnson (right) took office in May, advocates reached a deal with restaurant industry lobbyists to phase out the tipped-minimum wage over five years. "The closest pending victory is in Chicago," said Saru Jayaraman, founder and president of the advocacy group One Fair Wage. Three-fourths said they would reduce the number of tipped workers on their payroll, and nearly half said the cuts would be significant. The $9.48 an hour wage most workers got cost the restaurant $5,449.61, he said, a fraction of the $17,198 in tips workers earned. That's one reason why the restaurant industry engaged in a kind of bidding war against itself, to find a compromise solution that politicians like Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa, Johnson's floor manager in the City Council, would buy.

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