New London ― About three dozen police officers were called in to maintain order Wednesday during a protest by more than 100 longshoremen outside the gates of State Pier in New London.

Local members of the International Longshoremen’s Association are on strike to protest Danish offshore wind company Ørsted’s use of a different union for operating heavy-lift equipment at State Pier, which is being used as a staging assembly area for offshore wind turbines.

Connecticut building trade union members already under contract for work at State Pier arrived in buses on Wednesday only to be blocked by ILA protesters, many of whom had come from New Jersey. Police arrived in force shortly after.

New London police officers joined with a contingent of state troopers to usher a bus through the gates off State Pier Road later in the morning. The bus passed through a throng of sign-waving protesters yelling profanities and insults.

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The strike started on Monday, the same week Ørsted was preparing to load wind turbine components onto a barge for the first trip to South Fork Wind, off the coast of Long Island. All the parts necessary for one turbine ― the three blades, tower portions and nacelle ― will be loaded onto one barge and shipped for installation as part of the project.

The ILA is framing the fight as one that has implications for ports and its work crews all along the East Coast. Ørsted calls it a jurisdictional issue between two unions.

Despite the lack of longshoremen on site ― about 30 would be working ― Ørsted spokesman Tory Mazzola, in a statement on Wednesday, said work would continue to keep South Fork Wind on track.

“The South Fork Wind team is continuing preparations today for the upcoming load-out of the project’s first wind turbine. With the ILA still refusing to work ― and attempting today to block other Connecticut union workers from accessing the job site ― we had to move to a contingency plan to keep this work on-track.

The ILA plans to strike until it can get Ørsted to the negotiating table to work out a long-term plan that would see ILA members trained and working on the large cranes and self-propelled modular transports that are now operated by the Connecticut Building Trades’ Operating Engineers, a different union that already has a labor agreement in place for work at State Pier.

ILA Local 1411 business manager and spokesman Peter Olsen said the issue involves New London and all of the other ports along the East Coast where ILA has jurisdiction.

“We have been up front about what we want and what we need to hear from the other side,” Olsen said.

Longshoremen are not yet trained on the specialized equipment, and while its members planned to get trained, the union still has no guarantees from Ørsted that ILA members will secure those jobs. The loading, unloading and moving around of cargo at State Pier is what ILA has done for decades, Olsen said.

Ørsted, in its statement, said “We continue to engage with the ILA and we’re hopeful they’ll take us up on our offer to meet.”

“We continue to believe that the quickest way to address this jurisdictional dispute is for the ILA to engage the Operating Engineers to resolve the issue,” said Allison Ziogas, head of labor relations for Ørsted, said in a statement.

Jim Paylor, ILA assistant general organizer and co-chairman of the ILA’s offshore wind committee, said Ørsted has called it a dispute between two unions but in reality it is an “erosion of jurisdiction.”

“They created the jurisdictional issue,” Paylor said.

Paylor said Ørsted’s use of the State Pier put longshoremen out of work for three years and they have returned to find they will not be trained to operate some of the key equipment for that work.

“(Ørsted) didn’t have a right, in my opinion, to take something in our jurisdiction and give it to someone else. They’re going to take over your port and determine whose going to work on it? Nobody should be giving that kind of power to a foreign entity,” he said.

Mazzola, in his statement, said Ørsted continues to engage with the ILA, and “we’re hopeful they’ll take us up on our continued offers to meet.”

Paylor said New London would be the focus protests all week with unions “across the world” taking notice.

g.smith@theday.com