Sen. Heitkamp Announces Dennis Kooren, Retired UPS Driver From Fargo, as Her Guest to the State of the Union

BISMARCK, North Dakota, Jan. 29 -- The office of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, issued the following news release:

U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today announced that Dennis Kooren from Fargo, a leader of the effort to protect the pensions of North Dakota workers and retirees, will be her guest to the State of the Union on January 30.

Kooren worked as a UPS driver in Fargo for 30 years, often lifting packages over 100 pounds which took a toll on his body. Because of the labor of his job, he has endured knee and shoulder surgeries, as have many other workers and retirees. He has been helping lead the fight in North Dakota and Washington to make sure the 2,000 North Dakotans and 400,000 retirees across the country who paid into Central States Pension Fund can keep the pensions they earned. These workers and retirees include many truck drivers, warehouse workers, and freight haulers, among others.

While in Washington, Heitkamp and Kooren will also have dinner in the U.S. Capitol on the evening of the State of the Union address with other attendees ahead of the speech.

For years, Heitkamp has stood with Kooren and other workers and retirees across North Dakota and fought to safeguard their retirement savings. In November, she helped write and introduce a bill that would put the pension plans back on solid footing so current workers, retirees, and employers have the security of knowing their pensions will be available for decades to come, without cuts. Heitkamp is pushing for Congress to include the bill in any larger spending deal. If Congress doesn't pass this bill, these retirees and their families will see severe cuts to their hard-earned retirement savings.

"It's a true honor to have Dennis Kooren join as my guest to the State of the Union this year," said Heitkamp. "He is selfless, determined, and honest in his effort to protect the retirees he's fighting for. If meeting him can't motivate members of Congress to pass our bill to safeguard the retirements of hard working pensioners who did everything right, I don't know what can. Dennis is in this fight not for just himself, but because he cares so much about the hundreds of thousands of UPS drivers, grocery supply workers, and others who worked hard to pay the bills and earned their retirements for themselves and their families. He knows how they will be left in the cold if Congress doesn't act, and Congress could learn a great deal from him."

"This fight is about justice. When we took our jobs we knew they would be hard on our bodies, but we also knew we'd be able to provide a good living for our families and earn a solid retirement. But now, through no fault of our own, those retirement savings could be ripped away, and I refused to stand by without a fight because this is just plain wrong," said Kooren. "I greatly appreciate Senator Heitkamp inviting me to this year's State of the Union. She has been our North Star fighting right along with us since the beginning. Joining for the State of the Union is a true honor and it's an opportunity to continue to raise awareness about our fight and push for Congress to pass this critical bill that Senator Heitkamp helped write and introduce as soon as possible. So many of my friends and fellow pensioners can't afford to wait."

The Central States Pension Fund is a multiemployer fund that covers a range of fields, including thousands of North Dakota workers and retirees in the trucking, UPS package delivery, and grocery supply industries.

In November, Heitkamp announced the Butch Lewis Act - which she helped write and introduce -- during a rally in Bismarck with over 100 workers, retirees, and their families. Kooren spoke at the rally. The bill would:

* Provide financing to put failing pension plans back on solid ground to ensure they can meet their commitments to retirees today and workers for decades to come.

* Prevent a single dollar of cuts to benefits retirees have earned.

* Put safeguards in place so pension plans remain strong so they will be there for today's workers when they retire.

Specifically, the bill would allow the Treasury Department to loan money, leveraged by safe investments, to pension plans to ensure that retirees and their families are guaranteed their promised benefits. This new bill would put the pension plans back on solid footing, ensure they can meet their obligations to current retirees and workers for decades to come without cutting the benefits retirees earned, and safeguard them for the future.

If the Central States Teamsters Pension Plan and other pension plans are allowed to fail, not only will employers no longer be able to pay promised benefits, but taxpayers would be at risk of having to pay billions when the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the government sponsored insurance company for multiemployer pensions, has an exposure of $59 billion and is projected to become insolvent by 2025. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of backstopping the PBGC, should it fail, would be $101 billion over 20 years. Such a consequence reinforces why workers, retirees, families, and communities are at risk through no fault of their own and must be protected.

Background

Heitkamp has been working with the Teamsters and North Dakota workers and retirees who are participants in the Central States Pension Fund to press for options from Treasury and the fund that don't include unfair and steep cuts to benefits. Heitkamp spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2016 to push the U.S. Treasury Department to reject the proposed harsh cuts, and joined retirees and workers at a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2016 to push back against cuts.

Last year, those workers and retirees faced pension cuts of up to 60 percent under a plan to restructure the multiemployer pension plan, which is no longer solvent. After pressure from Heitkamp and workers across the country, Kenneth Feinberg -- the then-Treasury official overseeing the restructuring of the pension plan -- announced that the U.S. Department of the Treasury rejected the proposed cuts, saying they were unfair for workers and retirees who would be impacted.