Dear Working Families e-Activist,

What a great job you did last week telling the investment firm Charles Schwab exactly what you think of their support for the privatization of Social Security!

On Thursday, in 70 cities all across the country, thousands of working people demonstrated outside Schwab offices. Wow! And online activists like you sent nearly 45,000 e-mails (wow, again!) and phoned Schwab offices with a clear message: Schwab—Don’t Pick Our Pockets to Line Yours.

You see, Charles Schwab, which makes millions handling retirement savings for working people—is working directly against our interests by supporting Social Security privatization—which would cause deep cuts in guaranteed benefits and put millions of retired workers in poverty.

Let’s show Schwab we aren't going away. Please click the following link to send a fax to a Charles Schwab office near you telling the investment giant to drop its support for privatizing Social Security.

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/SchwabShame

Last week we sure were loud and we sure got enough media coverage—but we’re not going to let up an inch until Schwab drops their support for the harmful plans to privatize our Social Security.

Get this: Charles Schwab executives, starting to feel the heat, claim the firm has “not taken a position” on privatizing Social Security. Schwab is ashamed of its support for privatization—and it should be! Privatizing Social Security would devastate working people, like their clients, by slashing guaranteed benefits, exploding federal debt and opening Social Security up to political corruption and Enron-ization—while handing billions in fees to companies like Schwab that would manage privatized accounts. So Schwab wants us to believe it’s just an innocent bystander in the attack on retirement security.

Shame on Schwab. Here’s the truth:

• Schwab is a member of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security (AWRS), the leading business-backed lobbying group supporting Social Security privatization. AWRS’s very first principle for Social Security reform is the creation of privatized accounts.
   
• Schwab has funded the Cato Institute, a longtime proponent of Social Security privatization.
   
• Schwab has a leadership role in the Securities Industry Association—another big supporter of privatizing Social Security.
   
• Schwab has been a player in strategy sessions with White House officials.
   
• Schwab’s chief investment strategist, Liz Ann Sonders, endorsed private accounts, and published reports say so has Charles Schwab, the CEO himself.

Please take a minute right now to fax a Charles Schwab office near you with this message: Shame on you, Charles Schwab. Drop your support for privatizing Social Security now. Click here:

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/SchwabShame

Other investment groups—Edward Jones and Waddell & Reed, for example—heard their clients and other working families when we demanded they drop support for Social Security privatization. They pulled out of the pro-privatization lobbying groups. It’s time for Schwab to do the same—and to put the financial interests of its clients and other working families above its own greed for those privatized account management fees.

Once you have sent your fax to a Charles Schwab office, please click the following link and urge other people concerned about retirement security to fax Charles Schwab as well. Click here:

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/SchwabShame/forward

Thank you for working so hard to strengthen Social Security and stop privatization.

In solidarity,
 

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO
April 4, 2005