11,000 people who prepare your airline food are considering a strike

President Trump announced a deal to end the government shutdown in January after a shortage of air traffic controllers briefly stopped flights into La Guardia Airport. At the time, many concluded that workers’ impact on travel had led the White House to retreat. “I think it’s really obvious to all aviation workers that that’s what happened,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “There are also many people in government who echo” that analysis. Now, other airport workers are testing that proposition. This month, about 11,000 airline catering employees — the people who prepare and transport food and beverages that millions of passengers consume on flights each year — will vote on a first step toward a possible labor stoppage. Many make the minimum wage in their areas, or less, and toil in harsh conditions with limited benefits. But collectively, they have the power to disrupt the air travel network. “The smallest mishap or interruption in any kind of service ripples out,” said Liesl Orenic, a labor historian at Dominican University in Illinois who has studied airport workers. “If a plane doesn’t get catered, it can interrupt all the people getting on that plane and all the other flights that plane has to do.”<br/>For decades, as unionization rates fell and the country moved to a service economy, organized labor has found that it has less power to affect employers’ bottom lines. The muscle-flexing by airport workers may reflect the return of a model in which aggrieved employees threaten the wheels of commerce.<br/>