CWA "Thanks" Chris Christie in Ad

It was typical Chris Christie bluster as the New Jersey governor held a town hall in Kenilworth, New Jersey, on March 31, 2015.

"Let me tell you something, these public employees should be sending me a thank you note," he said.

And what should New Jersey public employees be sending Christie a "thank you note" for? Well, for breaking the law by not funding their pensions.

CWA, which represents 60,000 public workers in New Jersey, sent Christie his "thank you note" in the form of an advertisement that points out:

• New Jersey's pension system is the most underfunded of all 50 states.
• Christie gave millionaires $3 billion in tax breaks, corporations $5.4 billion in subsidies, and gave $1.5 billion of pension funds to Wall Street firms.

In 2011, Christie and state lawmakers passed a law stripping public workers of bargaining rights over health care, forcing workers to pay significantly higher percentages of premiums. Then they raised workers' pension contributions, upped the age of retirement and slashed cost-of-living adjustments. In return, the law gave workers a contractual right to funding of the pension, and the law required the state to make higher payments to make up for the shortfall caused by two decades of skipped payments by the state.

While workers continue to make higher contributions, Christie reneged.

Christie made his insulting "workers should thank me" statement after a judge ruled he violated the state constitution by not funding pensions. That case has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

CWA and more than a dozen labor unions filed the lawsuit and recently made the case at oral arguments before the Supreme Court that, under the law Christie signed in 2011, workers have a contractual right to the funding of the pension.

"Dear Gov. Christie," began the voice-over on the Ad, "thank you for breaking the law and skipping pension payments, for destroying services and risking our retirement security to coddle millionaires and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies, for forcing workers to pay more while handing Wall Street outrageous fees for managing the pensions."