AFA-CWA Flight Attendants Defend Right to Privacy

Earlier this week, Flight Attendants represented by AFA-CWA received news that their campaign to disrupt the sale of their data to Google was a resounding victory. Former employees of the now-defunct, low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines are no longer in danger of having their health and medical records, disciplinary records, and identifying documents in the hands of a third party.

In August, Flight Attendants with AFA-CWA launched a campaign in opposition to Google's plan to purchase nearly 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, and data from aircraft operations, human resources, and customer-service workflows up for auction in the wake of Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy filing. Spirit Airlines fell victim to rising jet fuel prices caused by the current war in Iran and was forced to close, leaving thousands of Flight Attendants and other workers without jobs or access to accrued vacation time, sick leave, or other compensations due them.

To add insult to injury, workers discovered that their data, which the company claimed had been "deidentified," was up for sale to be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which data privacy experts said could be easily reconstructed to determine individual identities.

"Worker data privacy in the age of AI has become a whole new workers' rights issue," said AFA-CWA International President Sara Nelson. "Without our union, there would have been no one to speak for workers in this fire sale of their private information. We fought and we won brand new protections. Now we will take this issue to all of our employers to secure contractual protections and demand lawmakers protect workers everywhere through federal and state law."

Click here to learn more about this victory for worker privacy.