Google's $10 Million Spirit Data Deal Clears Union Privacy Hurdle

Google is $10 million away from owning 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, and the last serious objection to that purchase just evaporated. Aviation unions withdrew their protest in bankruptcy court on Monday night after cutting a privacy deal with the company over former Spirit Airlines employees' data.

The Association of Flight Attants — the Association of Flight Attendants, to be precise — announced the agreement on Tuesday, calling it "an historic win for worker privacy protections." Hyperbole is a union tradition. This time, though, they have a point.

What did Google actually buy?

Spirit shut down in May and its assets went to auction. Google won the bidding with $10 million for a trove that includes 500 million Teams chats, 100 million emails and assorted internal documents. The company says the material will improve its products and AI models. Ten million dollars for training data from a dead airline: that's the market rate now.

The sale stalled in bankruptcy court over privacy concerns, specifically the staff and customer details Spirit held. Last month, 121 members of Congress, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, pressed objections to the deal. A court-appointed privacy ombudsman then recommended approval, after personal information on 97 million Spirit customers was excluded from the package.

What did the unions win?

Under the deal with Google, several categories of employee data are now off the table, according to the AFA:

• Medical and disability history
• Drug and alcohol testing records
• Payroll records
• Additional personnel categories the union did not itemize

The union also secured a more rigorous de-identification process than originally planned. Google is prohibited from attempting to reidentify anyone in the data it receives.

Sara Nelson, international president of the AFA-CWA, framed the stakes plainly. "Worker data privacy in the age of AI has become a whole new worker's rights issue," she said.

"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," Nelson added. She's not stopping there: "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."

Note the trajectory. A bankruptcy auction produced contract terms. Nelson intends to export them.

What has Google said?

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, the company told Reuters it was "not looking to buy any personal information from Spirit."

"The information will either be completely excluded or will be de-identified by an independent third party before Google receives any data," the company said at the time.

That position now has contractual teeth, not just a press line. An independent third party handles de-identification before anything reaches Google, and reidentification attempts are banned outright.

Why should CMOs care?

Your company's internal communications have a resale value, and bankruptcy court will find it. Spirit's employees assumed their Teams chats were internal; those chats are now line items in an asset sale. The lesson travels well beyond aviation.

The deal also sketches the emerging compliance baseline for AI training data: exclude health, payroll and testing records, de-identify through a third party, and accept a contractual ban on reidentification. Warren's 121 colleagues in Congress, meanwhile, signal that federal scrutiny of corporate-data acquisitions is not going away.

The sale still needs the court's final sign-off. With the ombudsman's blessing and the unions' objections withdrawn, that signature looks like a formality. Expect the closing, then expect Nelson at your competitor's negotiation table.