Join us for a free community information session in the Eldorado room at the Main Library!

Boulder City Council is preparing to cut wages for tipped food & beverage workers while claiming otherwise. They are defending this wage cut by claiming it is something else entirely: An increase to the "tip offset". The tip offset is the amount employers can subtract from the minimum wage they owe to employees. This creates a new and lower minimum base-wage, reducing employee take-home pay.

That's a wage cut. Calling it something else (a tip-offset), or using some magical BusinessManMath™, does not change the end result — a reduction in the amount of take-home pay that tipped employees will receive.

If you're feeling skeptical, which is understandable, feel free to check out this explainer on the city government's website: Exploring the City's New Authority to Modify the Tip Offset.

• It games out 5 scenarios with different changes to the tip-offset.
• The "smallest" adjustment would take $700 from a tipped worker in 2027
• The largest adjustment would take nearly $3000 from a tipped worker in 2027

Claiming that an increased tip-offset does not result in a wage cut just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

We don't want to see a wage cut that would go into effect for tipped workers on January 1st — a mere 3 weeks before Sundance arrives in Boulder. So come hang out at the Main library for an hour, grab some free campaign swag, and join us pushing back against this wage cut.

Ps: Here's a bonus read - the President of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, John Tayer, finds the continued push for a living-wage for workers who cannot afford to live in our city "exasperating". If you'd like to know just how out of touch John is - here's a snippet of his recent press release where he moves the goalposts from workers frustration over a wage cut to... well, whatever this is:

"First, to characterize tipped work for a busy restaurant as a burden is to miss the point of doing tipped wage work. Quite to the contrary, a busy restaurant — as we hope to experience during the Sundance Film Festival — is a win for everyone, tipped servers particularly. Not to get too rudimentary with you here, but the more customers a restaurant serves, the more tips their waitstaff will likely earn."

Sure, workers will make more in tips during Sundance, and we also think that's good. But they'll make less in combined tips and base pay if City Council votes to increase the tip offset.