Denouncing the “unethical conduct” of the brokerage founder Charles Schwab, a boisterous assemblage of union members demonstrated outside the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton hotel yesterday to protest President Bush’s Social Security proposal and Mr. Schwab’s purported support of it.

The demonstration, organized by the New York City Central Labor Council, was one of several labor rallies held nationwide yesterday, according to the council’s director of public policy, Edward Ott.

The orchestrated day of protest was designed to prompt financial-services firms to oppose the president’s proposal to allow Americans to maintain a portion of their Social Security taxes in private accounts and invest the money in securities.

The noontime protest downtown attracted hundreds of members of several labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the United Federation of Teachers, the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, and Unite Here. They congregated at the hotel because Mr. Schwab was attending an awards luncheon there.

The idea of Mr. Schwab and his associates having lunch at the Ritz did not sit well with the secretary of the New York City Central Labor Council, Ted Jacobsen. “Charles Schwab, we have a message for you today as you are being wined and dined inside the Ritz: Don’t pick our pockets to line yours!” Mr. Jacobsen said during his remarks to the assembled throng.

Also expressing outrage at Mr. Schwab’s alleged support for Mr. Bush’s Social Security overhaul was the general president of Unite Here, Bruce Raynor. The union says it represents a half-million members in North America in the hospitality, gaming, apparel, textile, and laundry industries.

During his speech at the rally, Mr. Raynor exhorted the president and Mr. Schwab to “keep your goddamn hands off our Social Security!” Defending the solvency of Social Security entitlements and describing the president’s plan as “unconscionable” and a “scheme to steal Social Security,” Mr. Raynor led the union chorus in a chant of “Shame on you!” directed at Mr. Schwab.

A Ritz-Carlton manager would not say whether the protesters’ shouts could be heard at the luncheon, but the commotion drew bemused glances from guests viewing the scene from the windows of a hotel restaurant.

Workers at that restaurant, and at the hotel, are unionized, as Mr. Raynor informed his union brethren. Saying it was nice that “Charles Schwab and his friends can enjoy the benefits of a good union hotel,” Mr. Raynor suggested that Mr. Schwab “check his coffee before he drinks it.”

When asked whether Mr. Raynor could clarify his comment, the labor leader’s spokeswoman, Maura Keaney, said he was “unavailable.” She said Mr. Raynor was most likely referring to the “phenomenal service that the people attending these awards luncheons get … when they use union hotels.”

Mr. Raynor, saying “the people behind President Bush’s efforts” to change Social Security “are the people on Wall Street who stand to profit” if Americans begin investing part of their accounts in the stock market, pledged to maintain organized-labor pressure on Mr. Schwab until he denounces the president’s proposals.

“Wherever Charles Schwab goes,” Mr. Raynor said, “American labor unions will be right there to tell him to mind his own business.”

Mr. Jacobsen, too, suggested there would be no imminent relief for Mr. Schwab. “We’ll keep telling the American people about your unethical conduct until you drop your support for privatizing Social Security,” he said.

The rally’s rhetoric was heavily critical of the president, and many in attendance wore anti-Bush buttons. Still, Mr. Ott denied that there was any partisan motivation behind the rally. “We’re not Republicans. We’re not Democrats. We’re labor,” he said, adding that if there was a partisan element of the protest, it was that “part of our agenda is to put some steel in the spine of the Democrats” on the issue of Social Security.

The Social Security debate’s odd effect on partisan alliances could be found in the director of legislation and political action at the UFT, Thomas Murphy. In a conversation with The New York Sun at the protest, Mr. Murphy singled out for praise a Republican who, during his presidency, was reviled by organized labor as a union-buster: Ronald Reagan. In particular, Mr. Murphy lauded the “truly bipartisan commission” Reagan assembled for the purpose of evaluating Social Security. Mr. Bush, Mr. Murphy said, was to be faulted for violating “the compact between generations” Social Security represents, and for “tinkering” with a system that Mr. Murphy said provided seniors with their only reliable source of income.

In addition to targeting Charles Schwab, unions also protested outside offices of the Wachovia Corp. and MetLife, urging them to formally renounce Mr. Bush’s proposal. As the Sun reported yesterday, union opposition has already pressured two financial institutions, Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. and Edward Jones & Co., to withdraw from a coalition that supports individual Social Security accounts.