ILWU, Melvin Mackay, April 18, 2024

Stadium redevelopment project posed threat to waterfront jobs and regional economic engine.

In late 2018, the Oakland A’s, the Mayor of Oakland, Alameda County Supervisors, building and construction trades, local business leaders, state legislators, and the Commissioners at the Port of Oakland formed an impressive and formidable unified front when all of them joined together to announce that they wanted to eliminate a large swath of the working, industrial Oakland waterfront.   This elimination was to have taken place to accommodate the plan of the billionaire owner of the Oakland A’s, John Fisher, to turn Howard Terminal into a miniature version of the gentrified San Francisco waterfront – complete with new condominiums, office towers, and hotels, in addition to a baseball stadium meant to compete with the Giants’ stadium across the Bay.

The A’s envisioned fans sailing in the Oakland navigational channel with an “armada” of boats, watching fireworks and listening to music on party barges in the turning basin, shifting freight rail traffic to non-game days, and replacing truck routes with bicycle lanes and new sidewalks for fans – and shutting down a facility under longshore jurisdiction and the home of a PMA-ILWU training center.  The stadium project also threatened the viability of cargo movements at other terminals in Oakland, increased congestion, and the promise of a future larger turning basin, which is critical to maintaining the Port of Oakland’s competitiveness. 

In the face of overwhelming political odds, the ILWU stood firm and fought for its members.  We also became a founding member of an unprecedented coalition of every major waterfront group that had a stake in the future of the Port of Oakland.  This group was made up of a whole swath of maritime labor, including ILWU locals, the Inlandboatmen’s Union (IBU), Masters, Mates & Pilots (MM&P), Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, Marine Firemen, and more. We began meeting first at the IBU hall in San Francisco and then at MM&P in Oakland.  Joining us were maritime, trucking, and railroad groups, including the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, Harbor Trucking Association, California Trucking Association, and the Union Pacific Railroad, plus individual local Oakland companies like Schnitzer Steel and GSC Logistics, Cool Fresh, and BNSF Railroad.

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