On their fourth day in office today, Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien and General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman traveled to Seattle from Washington D.C. to join Local 174 members on strike at Stoneway Concrete. 

O'Brien and Zuckerman presented the members on the picket line with $1,000,000 in support from the International to help the workers and their families who have faced hardship during the strike.

That money, explained O'Brien will go into the local strike fund, and "They'll get a check next Friday for $2000. And then the next remaining weeks, they'll get an increase in their weekly strike benefit.

We're going to give 100% support.  We're going to win this strike. Our members are demanding what they're worth, and they're going to get what they're worth."

O'brien explained he saw this as a high priority for his leadership team. "Once we took over four days ago, we hit the ground running so we're gonna help our members that are struggling our members went on strike about 127 days ago and you know it's time to end this, we gotta fight, we're gonna fight back.

Earlier in the day the companies involved issued a joint press release offering to pay for the driver's health insurance for April if they would come back to work for the following 60 days as negotiations continued.

Obrien said, "it's an empty promise. If they were so convinced they would have agreed to interest arbitration, we're willing to roll the dice either way, one way or the other, and interest arbitration could be 50/50 at that point in time. If they really committed about getting this deal done, getting our members back to work let's go to interest arbitration.

They're spending more money on these scabs, and all this fake labor and loss of work. Had they just come down and stop being so greedy, they're tripping over dollars to try and save nickels. It's a disgrace. 

Now it's ruled by one of the drivers wives that some of these trucks have been idle so long they need to be brought back up into working conditions. 

You know, there's been some awful tragedies as a result of this there's been suicides There has been mental illness issues. "

Westside Seattle confirmed that at least two of the drivers have in fact taken their own lives since the strike began but it's not certain their issues or actions were related to these issues.

"Their employees have made them the success that they are and they should be held accountable. They are being held accountable today.

I've got a simple message for these employers as a new General President team says we are going to use every single resource we have to win this strike. It's a full contact sport. Put your helmet on and button your chinstraps, we're ready to go. "

One 15 year veteran driver, Jay Mullen, explained that the union has been working without a signed contract since August 1 of last year. He said, that the core of the dispute rests on two issues. First, the nature of the contract allows the employer, any of the concrete companies involved to determine how money paid is assigned. Mullen said that the union asked that 46 cents out of every dollar per hour be targeted at their retirees health and welfare plan. As part of their overall wage package they pay for their own health insurance he said. The concrete companies would not agree to this according to Mullen. The other issue was that annual increases in health care premiums meant that they were always falling behind. We wanted them to maintain our existing health care plan which typically went up between 10 cents and 20 cents an hour. "All we want is a fair deal. We're not asking for anything more. They put out a number. 18% increase. But if you take the 18% we end up being $10 an hour behind all the other trades in total package. That's if we took the current contract offer by the time our other counterparts that drive in this industry."

As to the West Seattle Bridge he explained that he has great respect for the Seattle Department of Transportation and that one reason the process takes so long is that they are very exacting. "The test and test again and then have someone checking their test results. You're in good hands with them. They are doing the job right."