Google Agrees to Exclude Spirit Workers’ Sensitive Records From Data Buy
Google agreed to stricter privacy terms on its $10 million purchase of Spirit Airlines data after the flight attendants union objected.
Google has agreed to keep sensitive employee records out of its $10 million purchase of internal data from Spirit Airlines, the defunct U.S. low-cost carrier, after the union representing Spirit’s flight attendants objected that the deal left workers’ private information exposed. Under the revised terms, announced Nov. 10, health information, drug and alcohol test results and other personal records will be excluded, and an independent reviewer chosen with union input will check the data before Google receives it, according to multiple reports. The changes could clear the way for a federal bankruptcy judge to approve the sale as soon as next week.
What happened
Google won a bankruptcy auction in August for a large archive of Spirit’s business records, which the company said would help improve its products and artificial intelligence models. According to Fortune and members of Congress who have examined the sale, the trove includes roughly 100 million emails and about 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, along with spreadsheets, calendars, software code and records covering marketing, productivity and operations. Fortune reported that Google’s $10 million bid beat a $7.5 million offer from Mercor, an AI recruiting company.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union that represents Spirit’s cabin crews, objected in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, which is handling Spirit’s case. The union said this week that it had reached an agreement with Google and Spirit that adds new protections for current and former employees.
Reports on the agreement list slightly different sets of excluded records. Analytics Insight, a technology news site, reported that health and medical records, drug-testing information, disciplinary files, identification documents and workplace safety records would be kept out of the sale. A summary published by BigGo Finance listed medical information, disability history, drug and alcohol testing records and payroll data. Both reports said personal information belonging to about 97 million Spirit customers was already excluded.
Beyond the exclusions, the deal adds several safeguards:
- An independent verification agent, selected with the unions’ involvement, will review the de-identified data before it is handed over.
- Google is barred from trying to identify individuals from the records.
- Google must treat the material as confidential and process it in a secure environment.
The union called the outcome “an historic win for worker privacy protections.” Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said that without the union “there would have been no one to speak for workers in this fire sale of their private information,” according to BigGo’s account. Google said, as quoted by Reuters, that it was “not looking to buy any personal information from Spirit.” Spirit welcomed the agreement and said it would help maximize value for creditors, Analytics Insight reported.
Why it matters
The dispute is an early test of how bankruptcy courts handle the sale of corporate records to AI developers, which are seeking large volumes of real-world text to train and refine their systems. Bankruptcy sales usually focus on protecting customers’ personal information. The union argued that this approach left employees exposed.
In its August filing, reported by Fortune, the union said the deal’s “privacy architecture” was designed for consumers even though most of the archive concerned employees. It also warned that the planned de-identification method could preserve links across the data set that might let confidential records be traced back to individuals. The union said then that it was not trying to block the sale or reverse the auction, only to have identifying information removed.
Nelson told InvestigateTV, a Gray Media investigative unit, in early November that she worried workers could be identified even after their names were stripped out. “AI is a fast-growing industry that is completely unregulated,” she said. She also told Fortune in August that flight attendants still had not been paid for accrued vacation and sick leave, calling the data sale “adding insult to injury.”
Pressure from Congress
The union’s objection gained political support. More than 100 members of Congress sent a letter to Google and Spirit warning that de-identified information can sometimes be re-identified, InvestigateTV reported. Lawmakers asked that payroll records, timecards and some employee communications be excluded and that limits be placed on how the data could be used. The effort was led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, according to reports on the letter.
Google has said throughout that it had “no interest” in employees’ personal information and that an independent third party would remove or de-identify such data before Google received anything, according to Fortune.
What comes next
Spirit, once one of the best-known budget airlines in the United States, stopped flying in May after years of financial trouble, and its remaining assets are being sold to pay creditors. A court-appointed consumer privacy ombudsman had earlier recommended approving the data sale as long as passenger information was excluded, Analytics Insight reported.
The bankruptcy judge must still sign off on the revised agreement. Reports said a ruling could come as soon as next week, but no hearing date had been confirmed in the coverage reviewed. If approved, the deal would be one of the most closely watched transfers of a failed company’s internal communications to an AI developer, and its privacy terms could influence how similar sales are handled.
