FairPoint Communications workers in Maine on Friday morning set up picket lines at every company facility in the state, from Presque Isle to Kennebunk.

Nearly 900 workers in Maine and nearly 1,000 in New Hampshire and Vermont walked off their jobs at midnight.

Union leaders say the strike is necessary because it has become clear the company is unwilling to back off its demand for more than $700 million in contract concessions.

Workers said they are worried most about company proposals to eliminate provisions in the contract in order to allow the company to outsource their work to lower-paid, non-union workers who live out of state.

“They want to outsource all our work,” said Kristen Profenno, a dispatcher who lives in Windham. She said that, although she’s a single mother, she earns enough to pay a mortgage and support her family. If she loses her job, she fears she’d be unable to find other work that would enable her to pay her bills, she said.

“Without this job, that would be impossible,” she said.

As the workers marched carrying picket signs, a passing Portland fire truck activated its emergency siren in an apparent show of solidarity with the strikers.

“I love it,” said Serina DeWolfe, a union district vice president for the state of Maine. The union represents about 300 workers in Northern New England.

Matt Hayes of Windham, who works as service technician shop steward for IBEW Local 2327, said the company has not moved from its first proposal in April, a list of concessions that include reduced health care coverage and a freeze in pensions. The workers have been working under the provisions of a contract that expired Aug. 2. The company in August declared an impasse.

FairPoint, which has struggled financially since it acquired the Verizon land-line business in northern New England in 2008, says it needs to cut labor costs to remain competitive. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and emerged from bankruptcy in 2011.

Hayes said workers continued to service customers and work to keep the company intact during the bankruptcy process.

“We worked diligently those years to keep them afloat. As payment, this is how we are treated,” he said. “The workforce carried this company through the bankruptcy and made it successful on the other side.”

Although the company’s land-line business is in decline, its other services,, such as DSL, are profitable. The company has 16,000 route miles of fiber-optic cable in northern New England, providing connectivity to more than 1,100 cellular telecommunications towers.

“It’s not in dire straits,” Hayes said of the company.

Jenny Nappi of Portland, a union staff member for Pete McLaughlin, a union leader who chairs of the unions’ bargaining committee, met with the company Thursday to try a last attempt to convince it to change its position, but was unsuccessful.

“They have forced us to be on the street,” she said.

She said the company wants to bring workers’ pay and benefits below industry standards.

Several workers on the picket line declined to say how much they are paid. One union mobilizer told workers not to disclose their pay to reporters.

Hayes, who also declined to say how much he is paid, said that how the workers’ pay compares to the industry average is “irrelevant.”

But Nappi, a former service representative on leave while working for the union, said people in that job earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

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