While President George W. Bush is leading a national campaign to privatize Social Security and cut guaranteed benefits, legislators and governors in more than a dozen states are attacking public employee pensions with their own privatization schemes. Most of those attacks seek to replace guaranteed defined benefit pension plans with 401(k)-styled programs that offer no guaranteed retirement security.

Working families and their unions are fighting back to strengthen and protect retirement security by mobilizing against attacks on public employee pensions and the Social Security system. Early this year in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) launched an all-out attack on the California Public Employees’ Retirement System—traveling across the country to raise funds from wealthy Republicans for a ballot initiative undermining employees’ retirement security. After significant pressure from California’s working families and their unions, Gov. Schwarzenegger recently announced that he will back off his effort to put pension privatization on the ballot. However, he also stated that if he fails to reach an agreement with the state legislature, he will put pension privatization on the 2006 ballot.

Elsewhere, working family-friendly legislators in two dozen states have introduced resolutions opposing privatizing public employee pensions and Social Security. Central labor councils also are mobilizing workers to urge city councils to pass similar resolutions.