Police in Maine and New Hampshire have been called at least three times in the past two days on striking FairPoint Communications workers for allegedly harassing non-union technicians hired to replace them.
Meanwhile, as the first nor’easter of the season descends on the region, the company continues to refuse to release details about the “comprehensive contingency plans” it claims to have in place to protect the telecommunications network that everyone in the state relies on, including the state’s 911 network.
Wednesday marked the sixth day of a strike that saw nearly 2,000 FairPoint workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont walk off the job after accusing the company of negotiating in bad faith on a new labor contract. Roughly 800 of those striking workers are in Maine and have been picketing the company’s property and job sites throughout the state since Friday. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents about 1,700 of the total workers in the three-state region, and the Communication Workers of America represents another nearly 300.
North Carolina-based FairPoint has hired non-union temporary workers to replace its unionized workforce that went on strike. However, the company has refused to provide details about the replacement workers, including how many there are and where they’re from. When asked if they have received any specialized training required to work on telecommunications network, FairPoint spokeswoman Angelynne Beaudry said they have.
“Yes, they are skilled and qualified to do the work,” she said.
The company on Tuesday accused the unions and their members of causing service disruptions by intimidating its temporary workers and preventing them from servicing customers. The company also claimed “union sympathizers” were behind a phone-jamming campaign that targeted its customer service call center, clogging phone lines and preventing customers from reaching the company with legitimate service requests.
None of those complains were in central Maine, where police in Augusta and Waterville said striking workers haven’t caused any problems.
The unions denied the allegations and criticized the company for leveling such accusations without providing any details or evidence.
Beaudry said the company has logged more than 100 incidents of “various forms of disruptive actions” throughout northern New England, including in Maine.
Police have been called on aggressive picketers.
Portland police received one complaint Tuesday from a FairPoint replacement worker who said he was being followed by striking workers. An officer responded and determined that there was no violation. Following someone, as long as the follower does not interfere with the work itself, is not against the law.
John Harmon, a resident of Londonderry, N.H., also called the cops on “very aggressive” picketers, he said Wednesday.
Harmon called FairPoint after his landline lost its dial tone. A non-union FairPoint technician arrived at his house on Tuesday morning, followed by two picketers who had followed the technician to the job site.
“When they arrived, the picketers from the — I guess the local union — was blocking the technician from climbing the poles and stopping him for doing his job,” Harmon said. “The contractor was very annoyed and very nervous and didn’t want to get involved. They got into a yelling match. … That’s why I called the police.”
The police arrived and told the picketers they needed to move back and away from the pole so the contractor could do his work. However, by that point, the FairPoint technician was shaken by the experience and determined to return on Wednesday, which he did with a second technician.
“So they came back today and the same picketers came back today, but instead of two of them they brought reinforcements — they brought a third person,” Harmon said Wednesday from an Internet phone. “So instead of one technician, two technicians came out with a cherry picker truck.”
Harmon called the police a second time after the picketers continued to be aggressive and hampered the ability of the technicians to do their work.
“If they were peaceful, I wouldn’t have said anything,” he said.
When reached Wednesday afternoon, Harmon said the technicians were still working on the line. He added that he himself never felt threatened by the picketers.
Detective Chris Olson with the Londonderry Police Department confirmed that police were called to Harmon’s location on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. He said the responding officers asked the picketers to back away in both instances, which they did without further incident.
In Augusta and Waterville, where workers are picketing Fairpoint offices, there are no reports of problems, police in both cities said.
Augusta Lt. Kevin Lully said Wednesday that FairPoint is paying for special details to have Augusta police monitor the picketing workers, members of IBEW Local 2327, in Augusta, in front of the State Street FairPoint building, where some FairPoint employees continue to work.
“The folks down there that are picketing are very cooperative,” Lully said. He said generally the patrol officers introduce themselves to both the striking workers outside and those in the building.
“There has been that open line of communication. They’ve been very cooperating and decent to deal with on both side,” Lully said. “So far so good.”
Waterville police Chief Joseph Massey said that city has “not had any trouble whatsoever” with strikers picketing on Industry Road.
Peter McLaughlin, business manager for the IBEW 2327 in Augusta, admitted that striking workers are following FairPoint’s temporary technicians to customer homes and other job sites to picket on the spot in some parts of the state.
“We’ve just been picking up the scab workforce as it comes into place,” he said. “Where we can pick them up and find them we certainly are picketing their work locations.”
As long as they are obeying traffic laws and not creating unsafe conditions, mobile picketing at FairPoint job sites is within the rights of striking workers, he said.
That may be, Harmon said, but he wanted his phone to be fixed and the picketers prevented that from happening.
McLaughlin said the unions do not want to intimidate customers.
“These are our friends and neighbors we have here,” McLaughlin said. “We’re not going to be doing anything to jeopardize our relationship with our folks.”
FairPoint’s Beaudry reported Wednesday evening that the storm has so far not caused any service disruptions.
“At this point, we are not aware of any material impact,” she said.
Mike Reed, FairPoint’s Maine president, on Monday updated the governor and representatives from the Maine Public Utilities Commission and the Public Advocate’s Office on the company’s contingency plans to maintain its telecommunications network during the strike and impending storm. FairPoint’s network, which consists of nearly 300,000 telephone poles in Maine that carry telephone and DSL lines and fiber-optic cables, not only provides telephone service to thousands of Mainers, but it also carries the state’s 911 calls and is leased to major cell phone carriers like AT&T who use it to carry out-of-state cell phone calls.
Tom Welch, chairman of the Maine PUC, said the meeting consisted of “very high-level conversation.” When asked whether he left the meeting satisfied with the company’s contingency plans, he quipped that “the PUC never uses the word ‘satisfied’ when talking about utilities.”
However, he said nothing in the meeting raised any alarms.
“There was nothing that came out of the meeting that changed the level of our vigilance in respect to what the company was doing,” Welch said.
Tim Schneider, Maine’s public advocate, also attended the meeting. The public advocate’s office doesn’t contain any technical expertise, so Schneider declined to make a judgment call on the company’s contingency plans.
“Given the regulatory tools we have, we’re relying on the company to say whether (its plans are) sufficient or not,” he said.
The reality is, beyond that, there’s not much anyone can do.
“Unfortunately, the only way to verify that the company’s plans are adequate is to see how their network weathers the storm,” he said.
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