The FairPoint strike went into a third day Sunday with employees continuing to picket the company’s locations in Portland and elsewhere throughout the state.

The company has brought in replacement workers who have crossed the picket lines, but there have been no incidents, according to Jenn Nappi, assistant business manager for the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The company and union negotiators have not interacted since the strike began, according to Nappi, but she said spirits were still high among the more than 100 pickets who protested at the FairPoint Communications location on Davis Farm Road in Portland.

More than 1,900 unionized FairPoint employees in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont walked off the job at midnight Thursday because, the unions claim, the company has failed to negotiate in good faith since labor contract negotiations began in April. The IBEW represents roughly 1,700 of those workers, while the Communication Workers of America represents another nearly 300.

About 800 of the striking workers are in Maine. The IBEW does not have a strike fund to support those workers who have walked off their jobs, Nappi said. However, she said the unions warned workers three years ago to be prepared for a potential strike.

She said many FairPoint employees at that time began saving money to create personal strike funds. Many workers also secured part-time jobs this summer to make sure they had their own contingency plan when the old labor contracts expired on Aug. 2, she said.

“We knew this was going to be a difficult contract and that the company might force us onto the street,” Nappi said Sunday evening after a day spent on the picket lines.

The company and the unions began meeting in April to negotiate new contracts, but the talks fell apart in late August when FairPoint’s representatives walked away from the negotiating table, claiming the parties had reached an impasse – a term in labor law that allows the company to impose the conditions of its final contract offer on its employees.

FairPoint says it needs to cut labor costs to remain competitive. In the negotiations, it asked for $700 million in contract concessions, including the elimination of a defined-benefit pension for future hires, a freeze on contributions to existing pensions, requiring employees to contribute to their health care coverage, and the ability to use nonunion contract workers. It claims the average cost of wage and benefits for a FairPoint worker in northern New England is $115,000 a year.

The unions have countered with proposals that would cut their benefits by $200 million, but would not allow the company to use nonunion contract workers.

FairPoint’s use of contract workers is one of the most heavily disputed issues in the negotiations. The unions fought and won in 2013 a legal battle over the use of outsourced workers to handle some of the company’s sales calls.

“That has been our main issue all along,” Nappi said in August after the company imposed its terms. “Their imposition gives them the freedom to outsource everything and eliminate 800 jobs in Maine, not to mention 1,700 in New England.”

The company began bringing in contract workers Friday, the first day of the strike, as part of what it called “comprehensive contingency plans … to ensure the continuity of service during this time.”

The North Carolina-based company has not provided further details on these replacement workers, such as where they are from, how many there are or if they are trained telecom workers.

FairPoint spokeswoman Angelynn Amores Beaudry could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Nappi said that most of the contract workers the company has brought to the region are untrained workers from Southern states, such as Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana.

Nappi predicted the strike would have a negative impact on FairPoint’s customers.

“What they generally do, or have done, or can do, is bring in unskilled labor from out of state, generally from the South,” Nappi has previously said. “That is detrimental to the economic goals of the state because without question FairPoint maintains the state’s backbone infrastructure for communication. Cellphones go through it, landlines go through it. Internet goes through it and you need to have skilled, knowledgeable workers working on that. You can take a hospital down if you’re not careful. It’s not like just anybody can come in and do this work.”

FairPoint bought the Northern New England landline business from Verizon in 2008. Eighteen months later, it filed for bankruptcy. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2011 and has struggled to become profitable since. It lost $54.9 million in the first half of 2014, according to its financial statements.

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