001[Music] hi and welcome to another edition of all politics is local I'm your host John featherston on tonight's episode of all politics logo we're talking about the 2024 ballot questions there's five questions on the ballot and if you haven't been paying attention there's a lot that we're going to go over tonight question one's going to be the state auditor authority to audit the legislature I think that one pretty much makes common sense question two is getting a lot of media play right now the elimination of the MCAS as a high school gradu graduation requirement question three is unionization for transportation network drivers question four this could be an interesting one a limited legalization and regulation of certain natural psychedelic substances maybe we'll touch on that in a future episode and tonight we have an expert
002we have uh Chris Lane the former political director of mass GOP and a holster for signal to talk about minimum wage for tip workers Chris welcome to all politics is local John thanks for having me good to see hey it's a pleasure good to see you again thanks for coming in absolutely so question five sounds pretty simple sounds pretty good if you're a a tipped worker you're going to maybe get a pay raise so it s sounds good yeah if if you get 4 seconds into the conversation uh this the story really changes um but he the the idea is that um a radical group from California came in called one Fair wage and their idea was to raise the minimum wage of tipped workers and again who doesn't want to see their local bartender
003down at the the you know the local spot make good money and make a livable wage everybody wants that absolutely yeah but when you dig just an inch deeper on what this question actually does it takes the minimum wage and and puts it to $15 an hour and the the restaurants responsible for that so first it's bad for restaurants because every single full-time employee uh will that'll cost restaurants $118,500 per employee wow second for the servers themselves all of their tips now go into what they call a tip pool so they're no longer receiving when you fill out that check when that money is supposed to go to them that will no longer be the case it will go into a giant pot and then be redistributed throughout the entire restaurant so servers will make
004less money bartenders will make less money that that's a fact not an opinion and then the third part of it it's just bad for communities and and for consumers this has been tried in other places this has been tried in Washington DC in the first six months this was tried in Washington DC 10% of the restaurant industry went out of business so that cost thousands of jobs each one of those buildings that houses these restaurants go vacant downtowns are decimated and this is just bad all around it's bad policy it's not what these workers want it's being driven by a very very very radical Progressive group from California so let's break it down I mean come out of co uh due to inflation everything is more expensive in a restaurant or a bar right now
005to- Go containers price of food uh supplies a good employee is more expensive than it used to be so number one you've have restaurants that are really just hanging on if they're lucky and very few unfortunately are probably flourishing so this adds your words $118,500 per employee expense to somebody who's trying to hold on right now with his fingernails to his business so immediately it's going to put you know a small little mom and pop place out of business and that is precisely who it hurts the most the big big chains might be able to afford this the super wealthy high-end restaurants will probably be okay it is your middle class family restaurants that simply won't survive it it this will cost the average family restaurant between $250 and $350,000 a year and ask any
006one of those um owners and operators there is not $300,000 extra sitting in their margins no not at all and and so we're going to we're going to be driven into this world where it's only going to be takeout in Chipotle and these fast service places or your high restaurants the middle class American restaurant will disappear from Massachusetts and it will be absolutely devastating uh for for every Community across the state so you you must talk to bartenders waiters waitresses I mean what's what's the feedback that you're getting from them yeah so uh I've been working on this campaign for for the better part of a year and when I first started talking to bartenders about the question itself uh very few people even knew it was happening uh and and but instantly once they
007learned what it was I I've had literally unanimous consent that this is a bad idea uh I know that sounds hyperbolic but I I have now asked this to hundreds of tipped workers in restaurants and I can't find one that's in favor of this so the people that this is quote unquote designed to help are the people that unanimously uh rejected so the weight staff doesn't want it the bartenders don't want it quite obviously no owner wants $300,000 added to his bottom line so you mentioned this group out of California what's their motive their motive is they believe like most Progressive groups that everything is um you know this the system stacked against us and the big bad restaurant owners are are being greedy and uh that this is should be distrib the wealth should
008be redistributed across the you know the whole Spectrum here and and the fact of the matter is that the people who live and work in restaurants the people who will be impacted the most um are going to be hurt by this the most uh ask any uh waiter waitress bartender uh they know that their income will go down not up because of this and and that's where on paper just reading this it sounds like a pay increase it is fundamentally a pay decrease so let's drill down a little bit on what one thing that you said and let's get get into the details a little bit so now if you're a waiter or bartender you might have to you know tip out like a bus boy or a bar back or something like that now
009under this new plan all tips will go into a pool and then restaurant management gets to decide how that so he could give he could give a 100 bucks to the dishwasher that night which I'm not saying is a bad thing but I mean you you earn the tips for your good service but now you canot dictate even like where your money goes is that what I'm hearing correctly you were completely subjected to everyone else's work ethic and how they work with their customers and and imagine this too the average restaurant in DC now has a service fee included in this and so what they've seen the numbers and and tips have gone down also when you're tipping you're tipping about your experience with your waiter or waitress with your bartender once you know that
010that money is not going towards them the natural human thing is you're going to tip less you're going to tip less absolutely and where's the incentive for that waiter waitress bartender to provide excellent service start to finish when you know that that money is just going to go somewhere else and so in a in a postco world where the service industry has been through so much we're now going to put them through this too it's just a it's just a bad idea all right so let let's a yes vote on this would increase the minimum hourly wage an employer must pay a tip worker to the full State minimum wage implemented over 5 years so it would start in 2005 and max out in 2029 at which point employers could pull all tips and distribute
011them to all non-management workers so that's one good thing and the management doesn't get any a no vote would make no change in the law governing tip pooling or minimum wage for tip workers So currently in Massachusetts a tipped employee please tell me if I'm wrong what do they make six and a quarter an hour I think it's 675 675 675 but don't quote me on there it's somewhere in that ball right so it's it's not the minimum wage of a wood is 15 so it would be a sliding scale from 2025 to 2029 are is that tip pool not go in till 29 or does that start in 2025 it would start immediately it would start immediately and and the other so that's even worse it's even worse the other part that again and
012I had no idea this was the case before I started on on this work the 675 minimum wage if you went to work that night and you did not not make $15 an hour with your tips it is already uh mandated by state law that your employer has to make it up for it so the idea that you're only making 675 an hour is also fundamentally untrue because if for whatever reason slow night empty restaurant bad tipping whatever the thing may be if you don't make $15 an hour it is the law that your employer already has to make it up so this is where I have a really hard time understanding the other side and you know John we're we're we're Massachusetts Republicans we we typically have to understand where the other side's coming
013from in order to get things done and and even though I may not agree with it often I can rationally bring myself to understand what the motivation is I simply can't do it on this one because it just doesn't make sense you beat me to it because I was going to say the law is already in place that if you didn't make the money tonight your employer has to you know compensate you or send you home and you know uh and you still have to make minimum wage so I really don't there there's more to this than meets the eye I think is this like a step one of this Progressive uh group coming in and is this a way for them to eventually maybe unionize all uh restaurants I mean so yeah they they
014have a whole bunch of goals in mind and and in fact they they've gone after this in in almost a dozen states across the country Most states have actually thrown this off the ballot because of it's uh it's unconstitutional in a lot of ways uh especially the idea of taking people's money and dist redistributing it to others um but this is where I love the fact that it's on the ballot here in Massachusetts because from their perspective outside of maybe California and a few other states they see Massachusetts as a layup they see this as an opportunity to get the ball rolling and have this progress into every state they possibly can and that's where I love Massachusetts voters we have a long history of um sure we're blue in nature but we have a
015long history to standing up to craziness uh true and and we've displayed that by having Republican and Democratic Governors Republican and Democratic senators um and here's a great opportunity to fundamentally reject a progressive idea that does not move our state forward it moves it backward and it destroys an industry it doesn't help it so you must be talking with a ma Mass Restaurant Association I mean what's their stance on all yeah mass mass Restaurant Association has been uh spearheading uh this effort uh the no on five campaign and and I can't say enough about the people uh there and and frankly restaurant workers across the state um you know as you mentioned I'm I'm I'm a pollster and I've done some polling work here uh if you look at the the favorable unfavorable of people
016who work in restaurants bartenders tip workers it it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 to5 it people love their industry workers and my biggest fear is the great people in that industry will have no choice but to go do something else because they simply won't be able to support themselves the way that they always have right so I mean I mean speaking you know personally I was in the hospitality business for many many years I mean I worked my way through college you know working tips and you know I'm like oh tuition's due I got to go out and work x amount of shifts to make my you're going to lose that ability you're going to lose more importantly you're going to you're going to any good waiter wants to provide excellent service because they
017understand at the end of at the end of that meal or the end of that drink they provide great service they're going to they're going to get well compensated they might not get 20% but they're going to get 15% they might not always get 30% but they know if they build that yeah they're building return business because you always want to go back to that bartender or a waitress that takes care of you it's it's just human nature and you you become friendly with them you become concerned about them so you're going to maybe tip them a little bit more you're going to eliminate that entire floor right there and the restaurant owner is going to add $300,000 to his bottom line like you said it's just going to put him out of business so
018let's talk about because all politics is local you lose in a we're taping here in uh ashin Massachusetts a midsize town in Massachusetts let's let's look at a midsize town because Ashland's a good comp for most of Massachusetts If ashon lost five restaurants we wouldn't have any restaurants then you flip it to Boston let's just say you lost only 20 restaurants because of this what does that do to the landscape in Boston though too you know are you going to lose you know some uh some businesses down on Newberry Street are you going to lose businesses you know in the south end or in the North End you what would that impact be already you know the you know the fight with the uh with the mayor in the North End in Boston right now
019you know that they have to pay for other stuff you know for outdoor uh seating that other organizations don't you had another $300,000 you could lose an Institutional like a well-known institutional restaurant in the North End just based on this I mean it doesn't make any sense so so let's talk about Boston because this is an interesting angle that um we we've been thinking a lot about mayor woo in in an effort to help uh black black and brown communities um has uh created a whole lot more liquor licenses that are are going to be uh used Boston and a a crazy amount of liquor a huge amount right and and regardless of of that fact of whether that's good or bad or or indifferent I think it's 225 liquor I think you're right yeah
020um more the the threshold that this will create in order to even open a restaurant will be so enormously High it will put it out of reach you could create 10,000 liquor licenses it's a fake number it's it's fraudulent because no one will be able to afford to open these places to have them function and so if the idea is is to say that you want to help disenfranchise people get off the ground and and and and really help themselves in their community so now you're going to implement this idea that will make it even more difficult and in in a by the way the restaurant industry is notorious for being really hard as is and how quickly they open and close and so now a it's going to make it that much harder to
021open them and then if you do you're going to create an extra $300,000 a year to to that bottom line to try to make out for the margins on these things are already so small um in fact uh I I I won't be able to cite the specific study but I read the other day that the gap between making food at home and making and uh the margin on that food and the food at the restaurant is tighter than it's ever been uh and so it's not like restaurants are cleaning up off people here they're doing everything they can to keep prices as low as possible because they've gone up so much already and and so it's just really it's hard for me to understand how we got to this point uh and and frankly
022the legislature hted this because they didn't think it was a good idea if they thought it was a good idea they would have voted for it themselves you talk to any restaurant owner Democrat Republican independent whatever they're all going to tell you they pass their cost on to the consumer they have no choice they have no choice that's that's what they have to do just to go containers alone I have a good friend who owns a few uh Asian restaurants he's like I I can't even afford to buy to go containers anymore paper products anymore because the margins are so ridiculous when I'm spending more on you know to go containers because of inflation not on top of what I have to pay for chicken wings now or what I have to pay for liquor
023now it's it's it's putting me out of business adding this to them will only accelerate it uh but any restaurant as I'm saying will will tell you that I pass my cost right on to my consumer so that $300,000 is going to be added to every restaurant and it doesn't matter how big or small the restaurant is it's going to be about $300,000 who do you think is going to pay for that so that $30 you know to go order that you got now it's going to be $35 it's going to be $38 and the restaurant is going to be like who I got to pass it along to somebody eventually the money runs out you know socialism is a great idea until there's no until other people's money runs out that's what we're kind
024of looking at right here it's precisely what we're looking at and and I think the other part of this that we have to remember is those who have studied this and and where it has been implemented they've seen prices gone gone up about 20% and there's a whole bunch of people who um you know most of us can only go out to eat so often anyway if it's 20% more than that you're going to go out even less than than you already are and and then we're create this ripple effect of restaurants not only making less money because of the margins but less money because people won't be able to come in because it'll be 20% more and then you'll have waiters and waitresses and bartenders who will make less because people aren't coming in
025as often and round and round we go so it's just it's a NeverEnding sea of problems and and I hate to belabor the point I just again I can typically try to come to a reasonable middle on a whole lot of issues and and understand where both sides are coming from with good intentions for good things and and on this one it's bad for consumers it's bad for servers it's bad for restaurants it's bad for communities so I don't know who wins if question five passes you brought up a point earlier though too is with you know the expansion of like Amazon you know you go to the mall nowadays mall traffic is way off you know and uh a lot of s are closing maybe even becoming Amazon Fulfillment centers and so forth you
026start losing restaurants in your community you're not going to fill them back up they're just going to sit vacant so what is that do to your downtown district what is that do to your your appear appearance of your town like you have empty restaurants you have empty storefronts uh are people thinking about that is that coming up in your polling or anything yeah it's it's something we we've talked about a lot uh and we actually did some focus groups around this and how people felt and um you know the overwhelming sentiment was that initially we like the idea of supporting these people but but once we get to those types of consequences imagine if 10% of the restaurant industry closes and that means 10% of of of those buildings are now vacant and and and
027what that means for the the buildings nearby and the other shops nearby and the parking nearby and the just everything and and we talk about this all the time with you know high taxes and and the ripple effect that has that's that's essentially what we're talking about here uh we're going to strangle businesses that then will have to raise money uh uh in other ways and by charging more to Consumers and then uh waiters and waitresses won't get the same cut that they're used to getting for the hard hard hard work that they do and you know like you I I worked in a restaurant in high school and it it was one of the hardest things I've ever done and it's just extremely difficult and and the reason they get paid far far more
028than the average person far far more than minimum wage by the way it's because of how hard it is and and the idea of making minimum wage is is supposed to be a selling point to these to these hardworking people I don't think so what we found is uh most restaurant workers make 20$ 2540 an hour which is much more conducive to uh their lifestyle that that they need in order to survive right right it's being in the restaurant business is not for everybody I think everybody should work in it because you can learn a lot about you know the human race by working in the restaurant and dealing with people in difficult situations but if you're a good person you can make a very good career and make a sixf figure income in the
029right in the right industry and uh and kudos to you for doing so but you're not going to be making six figures anymore if you got to If your manager is going to decide how he's going to break up your tip pull so doesn't make any sense so you're here today to say no on question five I I am and and think about um also just to to close up here sure uh think about how hard it was for restaurants to reopen postco because they couldn't find the bodies right and so now if this happens the people most inclined to leave are your older more experienced highlevel employees and think about the incredible drop off of service you're going to have if those people leave and then who will be there to fill in that
030Gap it'll either be a no one or B someone who's not going to provide the same experience for the consumer for the restaurant that we're used to seeing and if you didn't go out of business when you lost that good guy you're definitely going to go out of business because your your service standards have gone down and people aren't going to pay for it anymore I can't tell you how many restaurants I go to because of the service that I perceive from certain people especially the individuals forget the entities the individual servers make those experiences what they are you for me I'd rather go to a restaurant with B+ food with A+ service than A+ food and D service right there it's about it's about that experience and if we take away from that experience
031which this will fundamentally do we're going to have a real problem on our hands so we've talked for years on this program about you know all politics is local and you know you've got the big uh one on November 5th of course you've got Cala Harris versus Donald Trump I have said for years that it's the local issues that have bigger impacts on you your friends your family your kids education we've got a couple minutes left here so let's just run down the five questions that are going to impact Massachusetts in the uh 24 uh election question one state Auditors authority to audit the legislature my words Nob brainer yeah uh WB and mass Inc just put out a poll yesterday uh that showed this is going to pass over overwhelmingly and and I think
032it's a great thing the the only thing I find ironic is uh that they had to work so hard for this to happen uh the the auditor whose job is to audit uh wanted to audit the legislature and was met with every resistance on Earth uh which forced her to do this ballot question and it's nice to see uh you know transparency wins uh for once you know I've had people come up to me and go it doesn't already happen like how can this not already happen I mean you know we can we can do a whole program about you know Sunshine laws don't you know and open meeting laws don't you know are affect of the legislature but I think it would be good if people just know I mean you know and you
033know I could understand why the legislature doesn't want somebody to look at their books but I think the public wants you know how is my money being spent I think it's a simple Nob brainer woman seems like a pretty reasonable ask pretty reasonable ask question two elimination of mcast is a high school graduation requirement yeah um again that same poll that came out and in you know from people that I talked to who are working on these things uh that's going to be incredibly tight uh I think you're going to see that one fall much more on partisan lines uh Democrats and and teachers unions in particular are fighting like hell to do this and and you know to get rid of it to get rid of it and uh you you know you're more
034republican-leaning voters not necessarily registered Republicans um but but Republican leaning voters uh like the accountability uh and if you're not measuring what you're doing how can you determine whether you're being successful or not so I think that's going to be really close I I think um the amount of money that's going to be spent over the next 40 days on this question is going to be astronomical um and uh you know we'll we'll see how it plays out just this week it came out that uh last year's mcast uh we're not good we're not good so you is it is it that the teachers union is kind of pushing let's let's get get rid of this because it makes the teachers I don't think it makes teachers look bad but I think it makes the
035teachers union look a little bit bad if mcast stores are keep going you know down CU yeah we we have to create a difference between teachers and teachers unions it's fundamentally different um and and it turns out when you close schools for years on end that it may or may not have had an impact on kids' ability to learn and um now we're seeing the results of that and just because we don't like the results we're going to eliminate the test the test tells us that I mean I think it opens up another can of worms that for two two and a half years you had kids you know learning on a computer uh I'm just speaking personally I would have never I wouldn't have learned anything you know going to school virtually and everything
036uh what but I I just think it it it also enhances that there there's a mental health crisis in this country right now and you know the a lot of 11 12y old 13y old kids who only know school by you know a zoom screen they got to be messed up and we need to you know kind of re-evaluate what's going on with our youth because they're never going to get that back you know so what I won't attribute this quote to to anyone only because I I don't want them to have to to deal with what I'm saying now but when I was an intern at the State House at 17 years old uh I had a politician who I very much like and respect say that the Massachusetts Teachers Association is the modern
037day Mafia uh and he was being hyperbolic I don't actually think that but what his point was that the tremendous power that they yield and and how much they're able to influence it and so this is going to be a real test of that uh between now and November it's going to be interesting question three unionization for transportation network drivers which is is that a fancy way of saying Uber and lift drivers yeah exactly right um from from what I see and read um it it sounds like this is going to pass as well um probably by some sort of margin of close to 60 to 40 if I had to guess okay question four The Limited legalization and regulation of certain natural psychedelic substances so basically mushrooms yeah this one's interesting and it's going
038to be really close and and all the early polling has indicated so uh it it sort of goes back to the conversation we were having 6 four8 10 years ago uh about medical marijuana and and you know should it be able to be used in that sense and if you're going to do it should it be regulated and and try to make sure that it's been doing it in the right way so you know there's a there's a sound argument on both sides for this one that I I think we'll see how it plays out we'll see how the the money flows in on this side on this too because if if we're being frank about how these things work there's one side that you know desperately wants to see this happen because they have
039Financial benefits of of it happening and this is where no campaigns are difficult sometimes because it's hard to consolidate people against an idea when there's no natural base to do that uh on question five for example This Will Destroy restaurants right so restaurants are highly incentivized to come together and that's where I I'm I'm curious uh if the money will have a real impact on this down the stretch to see where that one lands you know just you a personal antidote you know when I was the chairman of the board of health in my my community uh I had concerns about the legalization of cannabis and marijuana not because what you do in the safety of your own home and I've never worried about that I was worried that the state didn't have a plan
040in place and you kind of fast forward now you can't tell me the Massachusetts Canabis commission it has their things in place CU they don't have any leadership they have Chaos on their own board tell me why this wouldn't happen with this too I where's the jurisdiction of this going to be under yeah the Cannabis commission I don't I don't have a good answer for you so I don't think anybody does yeah so it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out we'll see how public perception plays on this because obviously you know where marijuana started 10 years ago where it is now are drastically different places so is there a spillover effect what of you know acceptance on that front or um is there some fear of the possible repercussions any
041feedback you've heard from uh local law enforcement Public Safety individuals on this uh it would be disingenous I I haven't talked to those folks to to say enough about that and neither have I because this this one's not getting a lot of uh you know ads right now maybe in the next 40 days it'll pick up and then once again Chris Lane upholster with signal you're here today mostly to talk about minimum wage for tip workers one thing that we didn't add and I was interested this is also like nail salons and uh it's not just necessarily 100% uh restaurant and bartenders it's it's it's other like tipped employees as well too nail salons hair salons I mean there's a whole bunch of other things I think just most people identify it with restaurants and
042and and that probably is the large bulk of it but you're absolutely right this goes Way Beyond uh just restaurants and and you know my fear is what's next on that front and and um I can tell you personally if we Lo if my wife lost her favorite bartender or waitress she'd be upset about it but she'd be really upset if her nail lady left the business because I mean that woman walks on water for far as far as my wife is concerned and I mean we joke about it but it's it's important to my wife and it's important to a lot of people so yeah I mean we talk about sitting at a bar and and getting a drink and having that personal experience you know what's more intimate and personal than than what
043you just described and I can tell you right now uh getting my to go anywhere than other than the spot she goes with her lady is is an impossible pitch as well so yeah this this has huge huge implications I would just encourage people uh even if you don't agree with everything I've said today or you've said today just look into this idea see who's funding the other side and what their goals are um because this was not created in Massachusetts this was not an uprising of workers in Massachusetts this was not tipped workers coming together and say whoa we don't like the way this is going it's the exact opposite of that it's an outside group who's coming in and trying to dictate what's best for other people and unfortunately for them what's best
044for the people in Massachusetts is the exact opposite of what they're trying to do there you go Chris Lane upholster with signal talking about the ballot questions the election's a big one this year Tuesday November 5th you got to get out you've got to get your information one nice thing that Massachusetts does is they do mail this to all the Reg boter take your time uh if if we piqued your interest tonight learn more what's on the ballot because this is the real important stuff folks so get out there and as I always say if you don't vote you don't get a chance to complain but you do have an opportunity to vote on November 5th you've been watching all politics is local right here on waa and we'll be back again real soon [Music]