* From ABC7’s Charles Thomas…

Plans to reform the state’s pension system are not sitting well with some unions representing state employees.

They’ve launched a television ad campaign about a reform movement that they say will rob them of money they’ve earned. Illinois’ largest public employee unions — representing hundreds of thousands of workers including teachers, police officers and firefighters — have joined forces for a major media campaign aimed at protecting their pension benefits.

The 30-second ads feature Illinois public employees or actors posing as such. One ad says: “I worked my whole life, I gave money from every paycheck, I never missed a payment because they promised us a modest pension.”

Public worker unions, under the banner We Are One Illinois, will spend over $1 million airing the commercials statewide. They want the public to meet the potentially newest losers in the so-called pension reform movement.

* That’s a pretty decent sized buy. Here’s one of the group’s two ads. Rate it…

The other, very similar ad is here.

* The unions also have a new poll which shows that only 48 percent of 807 Illinois voters know that public employees contribute to pension funds. Also, 29 percent thought that public employees have already seen their pension benefits reduced. They were also asked this…

As you may know, Illinois currently has a pension debt of seventy billion dollars in unfunded pension liabilities for public employees. Which statement comes closer to your point of view –(A) public employees should receive the pensions they were promised, despite these deficits, or (B) given the state’s budget problems, we just cannot afford to pay the full pensions of public employees?

60 percent thought public employees should receive the pensions. 34 percent said the state can’t afford it.

* And here’s a blast from the past. April 14, 2010, to be exact…

Following a signing ceremony in his Capitol office, Quinn also shot down suggestions raised by some that the state should go even further and change benefits for employees already on public payrolls. The changes Quinn signed Wednesday apply only to workers hired after Jan. 1, 2011.

“That’s the wrong way to go because it’s unconstitutional,” Quinn said. […]

The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago said it has determined that benefits for current employees could be changed, but only for future benefits. Any benefits earned up to that point could not be reduced.

But Quinn produced former Illinois Appellate Court Justice Gino DiVito to back his assertion that would be unconstitutional. DiVito said he and a colleague “reached the undeniable conclusion that the pension benefits of present employees, those who belong in a pension plan, cannot be diminished or impaired. All the General Assembly and governor could do is affect the pension benefits of future employees.”

Anybody wanna bet on whether Quinn changes his mind on this topic?