AFL-CIO President John Sweeney speaks at a news conference Tuesday during the group's executive council meeting. He is flanked by labor representatives Gerald McEntee, left, and Leo Gerard. Photo by John Locher.

President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security is part of a continuing attack on middle-class workers in America, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said Tuesday at the union's executive council meeting in Las Vegas.

Sweeney said the AFL-CIO's most important mission today is to protect and build on the investments unions have made in the American work force.

"Everything the union has fought for is all under attack," he said during a press conference at Bally's on retirement security and other topics of union interest. "Workers are being squeezed, and they're hurting. Our unions are suffering. We know we have to respond."

Sweeney noted some 1,200 companies eliminated their pension plans in 2003, and he said the AFL-CIO will organize a "grass-roots mobilization" of workers to fight the privatization of Social Security.

"Nothing would be a bigger blow to American workers," Sweeney said. "It's outright lies, and shame on us if we let them get away with it."

Gerald McEntee, chairman of the AFL-CIO Political Committee and president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said his union has contributed $1 million to fight Social Security privatization and has prepared a mass distribution of leaflets to spark dialogue within the workplace.

"These are the darkest days I've ever seen for American workers across the United States. The tax package put together by the Bush administration, the privatization of Social Security are indeed an entire attack on workers' pensions throughout the country," McEntee said.

McEntee said AFSCME is part of the public sector pension funds, which gives the union leverage in talking to Wall Street money managers.

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steel Workers Association, said Bush goes around the country promoting private pension accounts and telling people they'll get a 7 percent return on investment as the nation's economy grows by 3 percent, then talks to people about their Social Security and tells them about 1.8 percent growth. "It can't be both ways," he said.

Sweeney also talked about the AFL-CIO and United Food and Commercial Workers' fight both locally and nationally to expose hidden costs of Wal-Mart's business model.

Many employees at highly profitable companies such as Wal-Mart are paid low wages that qualify them for government programs, which means taxpayers are picking up the cost of health-care coverage instead of the employer.

A 2004 study by the University of California at Berkeley's Labor Center found that the reliance of Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California alone cost the state $86 million annually, including $32 million in health-related expenses, Sweeney said.