Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, joined America's Work Force Union Podcast for his monthly segment to discuss two issues heading into election week.
The first is Spirit Airlines, which ceased operations in May and is attempting to sell sensitive employee data as an asset. The data included approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, employee records, timecard records, payroll, tax information and employment contracts, to reportedly train AI models. TTD joined members of Congress in signing a letter to Spirit Airlines and Google, urging caution and guardrails around the proposed data sale. Regan said employees have fewer data protections than consumers and that an employee’s personal information should not simply be available to settle corporate ledger books during bankruptcy.
The second issue is the lame-duck congressional session that follows the Nov. 3 election, during which a surface transportation reauthorization extension must be passed before the current authorization expires in December. The concern would be that, depending on the election results, outgoing members could attempt to push through a range of other legislation without any voter repercussions.
- Spirit Airlines has proposed selling sensitive employee data as an asset in its bankruptcy proceedings, including approximately 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, employee records, timecard records, payroll, tax information, employment contracts and Social Security numbers. TTD and members of Congress sent a letter to Spirit and Google urging them to establish guardrails for the transaction. Regan said the congressional reaction mirrored public reaction — genuine surprise that this is currently permitted. The letter’s primary purpose is to signal that people in positions of power are paying attention and to lay the groundwork for future legislation that prevents employees’ personal data from being treated as a corporate asset.
- Regan said employees currently have fewer legal data protections than consumers, and this case illustrates why that gap needs to be addressed. The question of whether the sale should be legal is one he believes legislators are beginning to take seriously, but there is no clear regulatory or legislative protection currently in place to prevent a bankrupt employer from treating its workers’ personal information as a sellable asset, he said.
- The surface transportation reauthorization extension must be passed by Congress during the lame duck session before its current authorization expires in December. Regan said a full reauthorization is not close to ready, and an extension is the most likely outcome. The broader lame duck picture depends heavily on election results. If Democrats flip one or both chambers, an outgoing Republican-controlled Congress may attempt to move as much legislation as possible before losing power. Another possibility would be similar to the 2006 precedent, in which Republicans lost both chambers and did not return for a lame-duck session at all.
A Bankrupt Airline and Workers' Data
Spirit Airlines is in bankruptcy. The workers, flight attendants, pilots and ramp workers have already been let go. Now the company is treating its employees’ personal data as an asset to be sold during the bankruptcy proceedings.
The data involved is significant in both volume and sensitivity. Approximately 100 million emails. 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, employee and timecard records, payroll and tax information, employment contracts and Social Security numbers are included. All of it is potentially available on the market for training AI models.
Regan said the instinct that this should be illegal is a reasonable one and one he shares. Employees have fewer legal data protections than consumers. When a company goes bankrupt, the people whose personal communications and financial records are in that company's systems have very little standing to prevent those records from being liquidated alongside the furniture and the airplanes.
TTD, alongside members of Congress, sent a letter to Spirit Airlines and Google urging caution and the establishment of guardrails around the transaction. Regan said the congressional reaction mirrored the public reaction: genuine surprise. The letter is not a legal mechanism to stop the sale. Its purpose is to put companies on notice that people in positions of power are watching and to begin building the public and political record for legislation to prevent this from happening again, he said.
AI as a Runaway Freight Train
Regan connected the Spirit Airlines case to the broader AI regulatory conversation. AI is developing faster than the governance structures designed to manage it. There are more calls for guardrails than there are guardrails. And as AI systems require ever-larger training data sets, the incentive to treat any available data as a resource for those systems — including the private employment records of workers who no longer have jobs — will only grow.
He said the important step is to establish that this kind of data monetization is not acceptable, even if the legal tools to stop it do not yet fully exist. The letter does that. The congressional attention does that. And eventually, he said, it leads to legislation.
The Lame Duck and What Comes After Nov. 3
With the mid-term election one week away, Regan turned to what a lame duck session of Congress might produce.
The most concrete item on the TTD's immediate watch list is the surface transportation reauthorization. The current authorization expires in December. A full reauthorization bill is nowhere near ready to pass. An extension is the most likely outcome, he said, and securing that extension with a lame-duck Congress during the compressed post-election window needs to be a priority.
Beyond that, the picture is uncertain. Regan said the dynamics depend on the election results. If Democrats flip one or both chambers of Congress — which most projections consider plausible — the outgoing Republican-controlled Congress and the Trump White House face a choice. They can attempt to push through as much of their agenda as possible in the weeks before the new Congress is seated. Or they can do what Republicans did in 2006, when they lost both chambers during the Bush years and simply not return at all. Regan was in Congress at the time and said the assumption was that the outgoing majority would try to act, but instead, they walked away.
He admitted that he does not know which scenario will play out. What he is confident about is that for transportation workers and their advocates, the surface transportation extension needs to happen, and that is the fight to watch in the weeks ahead.
More information on the Transportation Trades Department AFL-CIO is available at ttd.org, where the full text of the congressional letter to Spirit Airlines and Google is available.
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