Spirit Flight Attendants Challenge Google's $10 Million Data Deal Over 175,000 Employee Records
Updated
Updated · WIRED · Aug 25
Spirit Flight Attendants Challenge Google's $10 Million Data Deal Over 175,000 Employee Records
3 articles · Updated · WIRED · Aug 25
Summary
5,500 former Spirit flight attendants, through their union, filed a court objection to Google’s $10 million bid for airline data, arguing the bankruptcy sale would improperly expose workers’ information for AI training.
Court filings say the package includes more than 175,000 employee records, nearly 150,000 tax forms, 1 million time-card records, 80,000 email accounts and hundreds of millions of Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint files.
Google said it would not receive customer data or personal information because a third party would strip identifying elements, but the union argues deidentification cannot reliably protect workers from reidentification by AI tools.
The dispute, with a hearing delayed to September 9, could become a test case for how bankruptcy courts treat employee data as AI companies hunt new training material and labor groups press for worker-specific privacy protections.