BOSTON – Members from the group One Fair Wage rallied at the state house Tuesday morning to get a ballot question approved that would allow Massachusetts voters to decide how service workers are paid.

But restaurant owners and employees were there too, asking voters to save their tips. 

The nationwide organization is working to get service workers a minimum wage on par with other industries nationwide. Co-founder Saru Jayaraman travelled from the West Coast to advocate Tuesday.

“The seven states that already do this, including California, where I live, have not only restaurant industry job growth rates and also higher tip percentages, because it turns out when restaurant workers get paid more, guess what they do? They eat out. And we all know who tips the best,” said Jayaraman.

But reliance on tips and customer experience is something One Fair Wage doesn’t want people, especially women, to have to rely on for a steady income.

“The highest rates of sexual harassment of any occupation,” Jayaraman said. “Because they have to put up with so much to get those tips.”

Restaurant owners, bartenders and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association also rallied, walking across Beacon Street to set up their own press conference with tensions briefly flaring as One Fair Wage went over their allotted time.

“Save our tips” rang out over the Boston Common.

Spreading their own message, they don’t want this to happen in Massachusetts.

“Consumers are pushing back on these out-of-state activist ballot questions. These are servers and bartenders who don’t need to be saved,” said Steven Clark, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association.

Many members of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association say that their customers like tipping directly to them, not paying a generic service charge, which is something restaurants may turn to outside of fine dining.

“I think that the consumer is going to end up having to pay more in the long run, and we're going to lose out on people going out to eat because cost service is not going to be there. People are not going to want to go out to eat because it's not going to have that interaction and that engagement," said Andrea Klein, a bartender in the state.

Both groups testified in front of a special joint committee.

The Legislature has until May 1 to act on the ballot initiative.