WOBURN - He was just trying to deliver their last round of paychecks when an angry group of striking Verizon workers surrounded his truck as he attempted to cross a picket line yesterday morning.

Holding signs and blowing air horns, they screamed profanities and insults. Then they blocked his vehicle and swarmed the windows.

“You can deal with the name calling, you can deal with the picket lines, but it’s crazy when they’re an inch from your face screaming that they’re going to kill you and your family,’’ said the Verizon manager, who refused to provide his name in fear of retaliation.

All over the East Coast, managers in Verizon Communications Inc.’s landline division have been required to don hard hats and orange vests to do the jobs left vacant by 45,000 striking union workers who are members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The unions walked out after negotiations went sour.

Crossing the picket lines, managers say, has been a harrowing ordeal. Verizon won a temporary restraining order against IBEW Locals 2222, 2321, and 2322 late yesterday, after claiming that union members tailed employees and attempted to run them off the road.

A hearing continues today in Suffolk Superior Court to determine whether Verizon will win a full injunction, which among many things, requests that only two union workers be allowed to picket at each facility and that they stay at least 100 feet from company vehicles.

The temporary restraining order prohibits IBEW workers from using their cars to endanger the safety of the Verizon workers. There are about 6,000 Verizon workers on strike in Massachusetts.

Michael Mason, chief security officer for Verizon Communications, said that in the Boston area and other pockets along the East Coast, some union members are doing everything they can to push the limit of the law.

“We get injunctions any place where we feel that action is so aggressive, vile, and threatening that we need the police to engage,’’ he said.

Myles Calvey, a business manager with IBEW who is representing New England in negotiations with Verizon, said that pickets can get intense but that the unions constantly remind the members to stay within the law.

“The message we deliver is that you have to see these people back in the workplace at some point, and hopefully that’s sooner rather than later,’’ he said.

James Green, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the goal of a strike is to disrupt operations and to show the public the seriousness of the issue. The tension on the picket line, he said, can cause tempers to flare.