Flight attendants at American Airlines (AA) have accused the carrier of potentially violating California’s privacy rights law over a new performance tracking app called Me@Work, according to Paddle Your Own Kanoo. The union representing cabin crew, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), raised the complaint on 22 July 2026, months after American rolled out the app without warning in April.
The dispute centers on flight attendants based at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where California’s consumer privacy law applies to employee data. The union says American had quietly collected performance data for up to a year before flight attendants ever saw the scores the app generated, leaving crew members unable to check, correct, or challenge the numbers attached to their names.
What Me@Work Actually Tracks
Me@Work assigns each flight attendant an aggregate score built from a wide range of performance metrics. According to Paddle Your Own Kanoo, American began gathering the underlying data well before crew members knew the app existed, then revealed pre-calculated scores the same day it introduced the platform.
American says the scores are currently informational. The airline told flight attendants to use Me@Work to compare their own performance against peers, and the company has stated a low score does not yet trigger disciplinary action on its own.
Union Says the App Violates California Privacy Law
APFA argues American may be failing to meet the notice, access, and correction requirements the California Consumer Privacy Act imposes when employers collect personal data from workers. In an internal memo, the union said employees have “the right to know when employers are monitoring them,” and it is demanding transparency into how each score is calculated
American has already rejected grievances that APFA filed at the airport base level before escalating to this privacy claim. The union says flight attendants still cannot see the specific data behind their scores, verify its accuracy, or formally contest numbers they believe are wrong.
What California’s Privacy Law Actually Covers
The California Consumer Privacy Act gives workers the right to know what personal information employers collect, to correct inaccurate records, and in some cases to request deletion. According to analysis from aviation commentator Gary Leff at View From the Wing, employment records fall under the law, and American has provided some notice about what data it collects and how it plans to use it.
However, the law does not grant a broad right to delete employment records, and there is no general right to appeal a performance score. Leff argues the union’s strongest angle is narrower: California law bars employers from repurposing already-collected data for a new, incompatible use without giving fresh notice first, and he called the current Me@Work rollout “more dashboard than management system.”
Separately, 2026 updates to the CCPA regulations require companies to complete a risk assessment before using automated systems that infer or extrapolate an employee’s job performance. For processing that began before 2026, American has until 31 December 2027 to complete that assessment, which leaves open the question of exactly when the airline started actively scoring, rather than merely collecting, flight attendant data.
Why Federal Labor Law Could Undercut the Case
This is not APFA’s first fight over Me@Work. The union filed a formal Notice of Dispute over the tool’s launch back in the spring, after crew members at bases including Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) and LaGuardia (LGA) objected to how the platform measured and could eventually influence their careers. That earlier dispute focused on inadequate union consultation rather than state privacy law.
Flight attendant performance records are also addressed directly in the American-APFA labor contract. Section 37.O of the agreement requires job performance documents to sit in a single department file, gives flight attendants the right to challenge derogatory records, and lets the union inspect electronic records used to track performance or attendance.
Because that contract language already governs much of what APFA is complaining about, a court could rule the dispute belongs under the Railway Labor Act rather than California privacy law. Federal appeals precedent, including the Ninth Circuit’s Alaska Airlines v. Schurke decision, holds that state-law claims are preempted when resolving them requires interpreting a collective bargaining agreement, which could limit how far the union’s privacy argument can go.
How This Fits a Wider Industry Pattern
American is not alone in rolling out algorithmic scoring for cabin crew. Delta Air Lines introduced a similar flight attendant tracking tool despite its cabin crew not being unionized, a move the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA criticized as an “outrageous violation of privacy,” reflecting the same tension between airline performance data and worker concerns seen at American.
The pattern suggests airlines across the industry are moving toward data-driven performance management for cabin crew at roughly the same time, even as legal and labor pushback varies depending on whether a carrier’s flight attendants are unionized and which state’s laws apply to their base airport.
What Happens Next
American Airlines has not announced any changes to Me@Work in response to the California privacy claim, and the app remains informational rather than disciplinary for now. The airline has also not said whether it will extend any additional data access or correction rights to flight attendants based in California.
APFA has not confirmed whether it plans to escalate the dispute to state regulators or pursue it further through arbitration under the existing labor contract. The outcome may hinge on whether the California Privacy Protection Agency treats the case as a genuine privacy matter or defers to the airline’s collective bargaining process.