A bill moving through the Colorado legislature that would lower the tipped minimum wage in cities like Boulder is dividing local Democrats and drawing sharply contrasting reactions from the restaurant industry and labor advocates.
House Bill 1208 would lower the base pay for tipped workers in cities that have set local minimum wages higher than the state’s — like Boulder — while still requiring total earnings, including tips, to meet the local minimum. The bill could also give cities more control over setting their own tipped wage in the future.
Supporters say the bill would help struggling restaurants by reducing labor costs. Opponents call it a harmful attack on workers.
The bill is currently under review by the state House Committee on Finance, which is expected to vote in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the Boulder City Council will decide next week whether to take an official position.
What the bill would do
Under current Colorado law, businesses can pay tipped workers $3.02 less per hour than the standard minimum wage, assuming tips make up the difference. If tips fall short, employers must cover the gap. Servers typically make far more from tips than their base wage, but earnings can swing a lot depending on shifts and location.
Because Boulder and unincorporated Boulder County have higher local minimum wages than the state’s, their tipped minimum wages are also higher:
- Colorado’s tipped minimum wage: $11.79
- Boulder’s tipped minimum wage: $12.55
- Unincorporated Boulder County’s tipped minimum wage: $13.55
HB 1208 would lower Boulder’s tipped minimum wage to the state’s rate — $11.79 — while still requiring that total earnings meet at least the local minimum wage.
Currently, Boulder’s tipped wage rises whenever the city raises its standard minimum wage. HB 1208 would separate the two, allowing cities to raise the minimum wage for non-tipped workers without automatically increasing tipped wages. How much control cities will have over setting tipped wages in the future is still up for debate.
The Denver Auditor’s Office estimates that affected tipped employees could lose an average of $8,320 per year in wages. State economists also project the bill would reduce state revenue by up to $6.8 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
A lifeline for restaurants or a pay cut for workers?
Supporters argue the bill is necessary to keep local restaurants afloat, as rising labor costs have forced many to cut hours, raise prices or close entirely.
“The average tipped employee in Denver and Boulder is making between $37 and $38 an hour,” State Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, told Boulder Reporting Lab. “We wanted to preserve this relatively good, middle-class job and still allow the restaurants to thrive.”
The Colorado Restaurant Association says labor costs have contributed to a 20% drop in Denver’s restaurant count over the past three years. Local business groups — the Boulder Chamber, Downtown Boulder Partnership and Visit Boulder — also support the bill, saying Boulder’s rising minimum wage is straining local restaurants already operating on “razor-thin margins.”
Opponents, including labor groups and several local elected officials, argue that wage cuts are the wrong solution. They say state lawmakers should instead focus on reducing high delivery app fees and addressing supply chain monopolies.
“The answer is never cutting people’s pay,” Boulder’s Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts said at a March 10 rally at the Boulder Bandshell. “Lowering the tipped minimum wage will push more workers into uncertainty, making it harder to afford rent, pay bills and stay in their homes.”
Some also see HB-1208 as undoing years of local wage efforts.
“I spent three years working to raise wages [in Boulder], engaging hundreds of in-person participants, and now state legislators want to undo that work,” Folkerts said.
Amendments on the table
To address concerns, lawmakers are considering amendments. One proposal would prevent tipped wages from dropping immediately while still giving cities the flexibility to raise the minimum wage without affecting tipped pay. In Boulder, this would mean tipped wages wouldn’t immediately fall to $11.79.
Boulder’s past wage policy debates have shaped discussions around the bill. Last fall, the city council approved an 8% minimum wage increase instead of a proposed 15% hike, citing concerns about restaurant impacts. City Councilmember Nicole Speer, who opposes the bill, argues that Boulder’s inability to set a separate tipped wage forced a compromise. Had the city been able to freeze or adjust tipped wages independently, she believes, it would have approved the full 15% increase for non-tipped workers.
That’s why Rep. Judy Amabile says she drafted the bill. “They’ve been asking for a fix,” she said of Boulder. But Speer and other critics argue the bill still limits local control over tipped wages more than they’d like and oppose any state-mandated cuts to tipped pay.
Amabile also contends that tying tipped wages to the minimum wage discourages cities from raising wages at all. She believes HB 1208 would encourage more cities to act — currently, only Boulder, Boulder County, Denver, and Edgewater have set higher local minimum wages than the state’s.
Tensions run high
Debate over HB 1208 has become increasingly heated, with strong emotions on both sides.
At the March 10 rally against the bill, workers and labor advocates expressed frustration that Democrats are leading an effort to reduce wages.
“How did we get to a place where a party that claims to stand with the working class is now pushing to cut workers wages?” said Alejandro Flores Munoz, owner of Denver Stokes Poke food truck.
Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann also spoke at the rally against the bill, reflecting on how hard it was to increase wages in the first place.
“It takes a lot of people’s time coming out, explaining why they want to eat food and pay their medical bills,” she said.
Meanwhile, supporters of the bill say they are trying to prevent more restaurant closures and layoffs.
“I know what it feels like to close your doors and tell guys who have worked tirelessly for you, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not enough. We gotta shut down,’” said Peter Waters, owner of Boulder’s T/aco, who supports the bill. “That’s the last thing I want to have to go through again.”
Last fall, Waters closed his downtown Boulder grilled cheese stand, Ruthie’s, due to rising costs — primarily labor. He supports the proposed amendment to keep wages from dropping to $11.79 while still allowing tipped wages to be set separately from future minimum wage increases.
His servers currently make about $40 an hour after tips, while back-of-house staff earns about $20. When Boulder raised its minimum wage last fall, he had to raise server pay but was not required to increase wages for kitchen staff. He gave them a raise anyway but had to cut hours by 16% and raise menu prices to cover the costs.
Amabile said tensions over the bill have escalated — so much so that critics have doxxed her, posting her personal phone number and home address online.
“I have a super progressive record, as do my co-prime sponsors in the house,” she said. “There’s no trust that we are trying to figure out a good thing to do for all parties.”
I’m very pro-business … and strongly support higher minimum wage. This debate has focussed on labor costs while oddly not mentioning a big problem is businesses are being pinched by the same high rental rates as individuals.
Our economy is predicated on keeping millions of people – who actually work full-time – in poverty. Then we start programs to give them money or support. This is crazy.
Pay everyone a living wage; period, no exceptions. Prices will go up. That’s fine! Pay for what you get, right? That is balance, that reflects reality, and that is way easier than complex and inefficient government support.
Get rid of tipping. And raise the minimum wage to a living wage for area in which the business operates. If customers are already playing a 20% tip, then raise prices 20% and pay that amount to workers. By sharing a percent of revenues with workers, you variabalize the labor cost or part of it, so the cost of labor becomes a business model issue. And workers would share in the business – both upside and downside. This, workers have risk but more pay, while the business has less risk but trades off some of the upside. The minimum wage becomes a guide for the share of labor in the business where revenues should also reflect the costs of the area in which it operates.
Lofty ideas, boomer binary thinking, and a nonsense suggestion that only puts workers in an even more vulnerable position. Care to share ANY business that employs this “model”? Because it seems like only somebody who has never struggled to get a livable wage would so flippant with people’s lives and bandying about terms like risk as if all that’s needed is just a better investment strategy.
Better yet, just create more worker cooperatives where the workers are the owners and share in the profits and losses according to their labor contribution. This model would indeed be lofty for Boulder where all the prime retail and restaurant locations are owned by either private equity or wealth real estate interests who would rather hold properties vacant for years rather than reduce rents to a reasonable level. Until Boulder gets serious about the real cause of restaurants unable to stay in business (artificially inflated rents), instead of focusing on strawman arguments like tipped wages, workers and owners will continue to be pitted against each other in a no-win battle over the crumbs.
The optics of this are just plain despicable for our state legislature, as no working-class person let alone one sympathetic to their plight has ever entertained the thought: you know who makes too much money….tipped workers! So am not sure what’s going through our local representatives geriatric mind here, beyond self-interest, felty to business interests, and desperation to look busy but accomplishing nothing meaningful. So beyond this and their divisive, virtue-signaling nonsense gun bill; I’m starting to get the real sense our elected “leaders” aren’t actually representing their constituents at all. Especially when you laughably have supposed Dems touting their “progressive record” out of one side of their mouth, meanwhile out the other are spouting business-friendly propaganda to serve their monied donors….exactly whom this party is serving most right now.
Why is it so hard for people to grasp or admit that if you can’t afford to pay a fair and livable wage to employees, you shouldn’t be running a business and expecting labor to sacrificially subsidize your bottom-line. Maybe fixed costs like RENT are too damn high, ohhh no, nevermind…let’s blame the workers instead. Gross!
Get bold and just outlaw tipping. Then adjust wages accordingly. Why should kitchen staff earn less because they aren’t tipped?
Totally reasonable in theory, but since the restaurant business model is predicated on underpaying servers, they would all fold pretty quickly unless they are like Illegal Pete’s which is always packed with customers. Restaurant owners are already screaming about their razor thin margins just having to pay a modest increase in minimum wage. Really, RENT is the elephant in the room and no one has the nerve to call out those who benefit from the existing system and then demand change.
Roxanne, spot on! Retail held vacant for tax benefits for private equity investors. Eats Boulder alive. Literally, there will be no restaurants to feed the local non-private equity owners. They contribute only to the failure of the economy.
We would all love to see the owners of the restaurants pushing back on this bill publicly publish their income too.
I started my “career” making minimum wage, which was $3.35 per hour back then, washing dishes in a restaurant. To afford college expenses, I supplemented this with “pay by the job” work mowing lawns and sealing blacktop driveways, to make more than minimum wage.
At the time, about 15% of workers in the US were working at minimum wage, and a huge percentage of adults got their first job by being willing to work at minimum wage. Today it is barely over 1% are working at minimum wage. However, most of those working at minimum wage are in “food service.” I asked a server at my favorite Boulder restaurant how many employees are working at minimum wage, and she said “zero.”
If a server typically gets $20 to $40 an hour with tips, then the debate is a lot of effort for no impact. However, I’m now a generous tipper, and don’t have a problem paying a little more if it goes to workers.