More than 600 Verizon workers across the state are on strike, including several employees from the Dartmouth Mall Verizon store.

More than 36,000 Verizon workers have been on strike since Wednesday, April 13, after Verizon failed to come to a new labor agreement.

Every day since the strike began, striking workers of Verizon and members of the Communication Workers of America have lined the building and streets to protest Verizon’s failure to create a new and fair labor contract in a timely manner. Each person contributing puts in six hours of picketing per day.

Among the workers' biggest grievances on a national level are the outsourcing of workers for months at a time far from home and the hiring of low-wage, non-union workers. However, according to Don Trementozzi, president of the Communication Workers of America Chapter 1400 and a Verizon service representative, the problems go well beyond those.

The union's contract expired on Aug. 2, and employees continued working without one for the following eight months. Negotiations for a new contract were ongoing, but Verizon CEO Lowell C. McAdam said he required negotiations dealing with healthcare and flexibility before agreeing to a new contract, Trementozzi said. However, though the bargaining committee presented those items, negotiations dragged out, and Verizon would not agree to any terms, he added.

Verizon proposed wage increases, continued retirement benefits, and healthcare benefits, according to a Verizon press release.

Some of the things the bargaining committee wanted were greater job security and more jobs within the community.

“It’s not just for the members and the workers for Verizon,” Trementozzi said. “This is for our communities as well, because if we don’t have good jobs in the community, economics don’t develop.”

Also among the striking workers' grievances is that Verizon wants to move workers, particularly outside technicians, out of state for up to two months while moving other workers in-state to fill those vacancies, Trementozzi said.

“We would never agree to that,” he added.

Additionally, workers want greater job security. “Without it, they would lay us all off and ship the phone calls overseas,” he continued.

“This is just corporate greed at its finest,” Trementozzi said. “Verizon’s greed has no boundaries, in my opinion.” He added that with a profit $1.8 billion per month and $18.6 billion in profit last year, “it’s not necessary.”

Trementozzi is involved not just with CWA1400, but with the regional bargaining committee that has been entrenched in discussions with Verizon for a new contract for nearly 10 months.

According to Trementozzi, Verizon wants to outsource 40 percent of the calls made to New England and New York unionized call centers to the Philippines, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

“With over 5,000 jobs over there already, we’re trying to stop the bleeding,” Trementozzi said. “Now they want complete flexibility with no limitations to send at least 40 percent of the calls if not more.”

Additionally, Verizon customers with disabilities may soon be facing problems, Trementozzi said. The Verizon Center for Customers with Disabilities in Lowell specially trains its employees to be able to communicate with customers who are hard of hearing. Trementozzi, who oversees the center, said millions of customers across the Northeast are serviced at this center. However, Verizon allegedly wants to syphon 99 percent of those phone calls to any Verizon call center representatives instead of those who are specifically trained, Trementozzi said.

“Basically, they want to reclassify them as regular customers. That’s a big problem when you’re taking on the disabled community and they have special needs and all of the sudden you don’t want to cater to [them],” Trementozzi continued.

Trementozzi said he wants customers to be aware that the changes Verizon is trying to implement effect not just the workers but the consumers as well. “That’s another situation where Verizon doesn’t really care about the customers, whether disabled or not.”

“It’s regrettable that union leaders have called a strike, a move that hurts all of our employees,” said Marc Reed, Verizon’s chief administrative officer in a press release. "Calling a strike benefits no one, and brings us no closer to resolution.”

Verizon mobilized 10,000 trained non-union workers to fill the vacancies left by the employees on strike. However, Trementozzi was not worried that they would hinder the striking workers’ momentum. They are determined to get Verizon back to the table to negotiate a fair contract and will strike for “as long as it takes,” Trementozzi said. “We’re going to stay out until we get a contract.”

Though 10,000 people were trained to fill the vacancies,the gap left by the 30,000 other workers on the street isn't filled, Trementozzi said. He believes the number of temporary workers to be much lower, in reality, and that most of them are managers who might not know the trades as thoroughly.

“We believe our cause is right and it’s combatting corporate greed at its finest,” Trementozzi said. “We’re in the fight for the long term if necessary.”