"It's Insane!" ILWU Longshore Workers/Truckers Challenge Oakland A's Billionaire Owner

Oakland A's Manager Dave Kaval On Board Of Union Busting Rocketship
A’s Owner John Fisher Who Owns GAP and His Family Control Rocketship and KIPP Charter Chain
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Dave Kaval, President, Oakland Athletics
Dave Kaval is the seventh and current President of the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball. Kaval has implemented a number of initiatives to connect with fans and community stakeholders, including hosting weekly office hours, participating in town hall meetings, posting blog and Facebook Live updates and communicating via social media. Kaval previously served as president of the San Jose Earthquakes, a Major League Soccer franchise. Kaval’s efforts with the Earthquakes led to the groundbreaking on an 18,000-seat, privately financed stadium in San Jose, increase in sponsorship, ticket sales and merchandise revenue and a team that finished with the best record in Major League Soccer during the regular season. Kaval helped the Earthquakes navigate the permit approval process for the stadium and helped organize and contribute to a number of community events with the San Jose Earthquakes. The soccer club has visited more than 55 schools and interacted with more than 10,000 students through community programs. Prior to joining the Earthquakes, Kaval founded the Golden Baseball League (GBL) in 2003 with fellow Stanford Business School graduate Amit Patel. Kaval was responsible for raising the initial capital to launch the league, launching the charter teams, and building an entire League from scratch. He also negotiated a number of major corporate partnerships, including the multi-million dollar league naming rights agreement with Safeway. Kaval earned a B.A. in 1998 with honors in International Relations and an M.B.A. in 2003 from Stanford University. He is a long time resident of Menlo Park and lives there with his wife and two daughters.

A’s owner John Fisher scores huge windfall: Will anything change?

Photo of Scott Ostler
Scott Ostler March 2, 2019 Updated: March 2, 2019 7 p.m.
John Fisher has about a 14 percent stake in Gap, worth roughly $1.5 billion.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/A-s-owner-John-Fisher-scores-huge-windfall-13658324.php


4Juan Contreras of Stockton waves an Oakland A's flag near the top of Oakland Coliseum's Mount Davis during an MLB game between the A's and the San Francisco Giants on Saturday, July 21, 2018, in Oakland, Calif. For the first time in 13 years, the AÕs opened Mount Davis, the tallest deck in the Oakland Coliseum.

Multiple exposure of Chad Pinder (18) and Ramon Laureano (22) as Pinder catches a ball hit by Dee Gordon (9) in the seventh inning as the Oakland Athletics played the Seattle Mariners at the Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, September 2, 2018. The A's won 8-2.Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
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4A rendering of the proposed new Oakland A's Coliseum at Howard Terminal.Photo: Bjarke Ingels Group
Great news for Oakland A’s fans!

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Either way, get ready for another loop-de-loop ride on the A’s roller coaster (not to be confused with the A’s gondola).

The news: Majority owner John Fisher got richer last week. Fisher’s family owns the Gap, and Bloomberg News reported Friday that Gap stock shot up when the company announced it would split into two businesses.

The soaring stock, per Bloomberg, “lifted the family’s fortune by $786 million to at least $8.9 billion.”

That’s not all Fisher’s money. He shares the pie with his mom and two brothers. John Fisher has about a 14 percent stake in Gap, worth roughly $1.5 billion. The family is also the 26th largest landowner in America, with 440,000 acres of California timber, enough to make about a trillion Khris Davis bats. This land is their land.


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Plus, the A’s are worth $1.02 billion (per Forbes in 2018).

So the big question is: Does Fisher’s latest financial windfall make it more likely that he will build the new ballpark that his people have been promising since he bought the team in 2005?

Or does this simply mean that Fisher will be a wealthier miser, continuing to run a low-ball, shoestring baseball operation in a joke of a ballpark?

One other lurking possibility: Fisher will now be more likely to sell the team.

The A’s big annual revenue-sharing check, over $30 million per season at one point, will disappear completely after this season. MLB is stripping Fisher of this annual bonanza partly because he was putting too much of it in his own pocket and too little into payroll.

Fisher is way more businessman than sportsman. The Gap is easy money, the A’s are a cash cow that is drying up, unless the team can be used as a centerpiece to a massively complicated real estate deal and development project.

Will Fisher put his new money into an A’s ballpark, continue on the path to nowhere, or take the money and run?

Our union the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers never would and did not cross any ILWU picket line. The workers of all countries must support Transportation and Port facilities as a main contradiction to solve the countries living standards and working conditions.

While playing ball as a sport is fine and dandy, it does not produce commodities for the good and well being of the nation. It therefore is a secondary contradiction and they need in all honesty to find a inland position to hit the ball around home. In all honesty the work of the Railway Transportation Unions (five workers per freight crew size when high fives are won again), and ILWU workers cannot in all justice be forced out of port, as that would reduce or cancel the living standards of the majority of people throughout the working nation. Losing port facilities is not the unions' option.
Elect and pay women equally per constituency restoring harmony and joy to our stressed specie. We all have a world to win yet. Workers of the world unite!