Imagine this: a high-paid, Ivy League-educated lawyer and nonprofit executive from Los Angeles shows up in Massachusetts and claims that our restaurant workers are being paid a “sub-minimum wage” that’s below the state minimum wage. To solve this problem for us, the LA lawyer-exec gets a question onto our state ballot — Ballot Question 5 — called the “Minimum Wage for Tipped Employees Initiative.”

Sounds like a just cause, right? Shouldn’t the state minimum wage apply to all workers? What person who cares about workers’ rights could possibly oppose this initiative?

Here’s who, for starters: the workers themselves — almost all of them. In a February 2024 Carnegie Mellon study, 91% (319 of 351) tipped restaurant employees surveyed in Massachusetts opposed the changes proposed in Question 5. Restaurant workers around the state are organizing, rallying, and writing Boston Globe op-eds vehemently opposing the initiative.

How could this possibly be, if Question 5 is supposed to raise their pay from a “sub-minimum wage” to the state minimum wage?

The answer is simple: it’s not. All restaurant workers, like all other workers in Massachusetts, are already guaranteed at least the state’s $15-per-hour minimum wage. If a worker’s base pay plus tips equals less than $15 per hour, then their employer is already legally required to cover the difference. So there is no such thing as a “sub-minimum wage” for restaurant workers. Question 5 would have zero impact on their minimum pay.

However, it would have a significant negative impact on their maximum pay. Most restaurant servers earn much more than minimum wage, because Massachusetts diners tip generously. In the Carnegie Mellon survey, 88% of Massachusetts servers reported earning more than $20 per hour, 56% reported earning more than $30 per hour, and about a quarter reported earning more than $40 per hour.

But this would all change drastically if Question 5 passes and the apocalyptic changes to the restaurant business it proposes are implemented.

Here is what Question 5 would actually do:

■Servers would be required to share their tips equally with all non-tipped restaurant employees, including office workers. This would drastically reduce pay for most tipped servers, especially the best ones who get the biggest tips. It would remove all incentives for servers to work on the busy days when they are needed most, and to earn more money by providing great service. Our servers take pride in doing a great job and deserve to be rewarded when they work even harder at it. This initiative would make that impossible.

■Your tip would no longer go to your server, or even to the staff working the shift when you dine. Instead, tips would have to be split equally across all days and all shifts. Customers would thus lose their incentives to tip well for good service. Some customers, understanding the new system, would likely stop tipping altogether, further reducing servers’ pay and squeezing restaurants’ thin margins.

■Many great servers, because of this reduction in their pay, would leave their jobs for better-paying work elsewhere. This, combined with removing incentives for staff to work on busy days, would worsen the already dire problems restaurants have finding staff. Restaurants would be even more chronically understaffed, hurting all of them, forcing many to reduce opening hours, and driving some out of business.

■Many restaurants would need to increase prices to make ends meet. This would would harm restaurants even more than consumers. It would be yet another below-the-belt blow at a moment when many restaurants are still reeling from COVID.

If you’re still not convinced by all of this, I encourage you to ask your server, next time you dine out, how they feel about Question 5. When a proposed worker-protection law is opposed by the workers it claims to protect, I hope that’s a serious red flag for anyone considering the issue.

Question 5 threatens the livelihood of everyone who works in the restaurant business, from top to bottom. This is why restaurant owners and restaurant workers are standing shoulder to shoulder in protest of this destructive initiative. It would be especially destructive to our local restaurants, which are mostly small and independently owned.

In light of this extraordinary situation, Northampton’s Economic Development Committee has taken the rare and courageous step of officially opposing Question 5.

I urge you, too, not only to vote ‘no’ on Question 5, but also to spread the word about this proposed assault on our local service workers and small businesses, and to help rally our community against it.

Robin Goldstein is an agricultural economist and periodic restaurant columnist for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.