The UHL Fierce returned to State Pier with a second shipment of 318-foot blades from Denmark for the South Fork Wind project under development by the partnership of Eversource and Ørsted, but longshoremen weren’t unloading them on Wednesday. Instead, the members of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1411 in New London were outside the gate picketing – joined by hundreds of ILA longshoremen from locals stretching from Virginia to Maine, all protesting the decision to award work on the pier’s new heavy-lift crane to another union. Ørsted dismissed the protest as a jurisdictional dispute between the ILA and the Operating Engineers, but for the longshoremen climbed aboard buses in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and across the eastern seaboard to join the protest, it was a fight to protect their claim to work stevedoring for the offshore wind industry across the coast. At the center of the issue is a 500-foot tall, green crane Siemens Gamesa shipped to New London to load the massive turbines onto ships to bring them out to the South Fork site off the coast of Long Island. The longshoremen say operating that crane should be their work, but a project labor agreement with the Connecticut State Building Trades Council assigns that work to the Operating Engineers.
From Virginia to Maine, Hundreds of Longshoremen Take a Stand at New London’s State Pier