UNIONS KILL JOBS

"The Café des Artistes has been doing a steady restaurant business in New York City since 1917, but is now forced to close its doors. One of the main reasons for this happens to be the fact that the Café is unfortunate enough to be a union restaurant and the exorbitant costs of supporting a union workforce has contributed to killing the business."

- Warner Todd Huston, The Union Label Blog, 9/1/09

KNOW UNIONS, NO JOBS

"The decision to close the Café (des Artistes) is exceedingly painful to make, but inevitable. We are one of the very, very few independent restaurants in New York City that operates with a union.. In that respect, we are a dinosaur because the huge added expense of having a union restaurant can be crippling, especially when the economy takes a nosedive.

"Since 99% of the independent restaurants in New York City do not have a union, we are not playing on a level playing field with the rest of our competition. One example: We pay approximately $250,000 more each year for health insurance and pension coverage for our employees than we would if we were paying for non-union coverage."

- Jennifer Lang, former owner of the now defunct Café des Artistes restaurant in New York which was killed by unionization