A deal that could help net the city a waterfront baseball stadium also risks exposing the Port of Oakland to retaliatory lawsuits from two waterfront conglomerates each seeking fresh public concessions.
Dozens of longshoremen protested the settlement on Tuesday. They said the deal would hurt workers over the long haul because it would cement SSA and Ports America — two companies with close ties to Wall Street — as the dominant players on the waterfront.
“We’re not dealing with companies anymore, we’re dealing with corporations,” ILWU, Local 10 President Mike Villeggiante said. “And those corporations have big business investors who want to cut costs, and those costs are us.”