Unions Protest Christie's Pension Fund Cut

"Governor Christie, breaking his word! Breaking the law!"

Workers protest the attack on the New Jersey pension fund and shout, "Christie is breaking the law!"

Below: CWA District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton says, "Governor Christie is in New Hampshire today, but he will hear us!"

About 4,000 CWA and other public-sector union members – all dressed in red – surrounded New Jersey's Statehouse on Tuesday to protest the governor's decision to axe $1.57 billion from a promised payment to public workers' pension system.

"It takes a special kind of carelessness and cruelty to be willing to burn down the American dream that my father worked so hard to achieve," said CWA's New Jersey director Hetty Rosenstein, whose 90-year-old mother relies on her father's public pension. "But that is the fight that we will wage here. I know I will fight as if a cruel monster is trying to drag my mother from her lovely home. I will stand on her steps and shout, 'They shall not pass!'"

Watch Rosenstein's full speech here.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney told the crowd, "If this was in the private sector, this would be theft. I am committed to fight this to the death."

Just last week, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on what to do next. CWA and more than a dozen labor unions made the case that, under the constitution, the governor must increase payments into the pension system. In 2011, Christie and state lawmakers passed a law raising workers' pension contributions, upping the age of retirement and slashing cost-of-living adjustments. In return, the state vowed to begin putting more money into the pension system each year to make amends for previous shortfalls. But while workers kept their word, Christie reneged.

Christie was traveling in New Hampshire during the demonstration. But protestors chanted this promise: "We will be back!"

Watch a video of the rally here.