Port of Oakland proposed leases

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.

Several unions insist the port would be better off fighting the lawsuit and maintaining smaller terminals with multiple operators. “They’re allowing SSA to blackmail them,” said Sean Farley of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which stands to lose jobs to other unions that do more work with SSA.

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.”

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