That’s what millions of viewers saw March 28 on the ABC national network news and talk show, “Good Morning America.”

The two debated the Weber case and affirmative action. To Buchanan’s claim that quotas violate civil rights laws by “favoring” one race over another, Pulley replied with the facts of discrimination at Kaiser Aluminum, where Brian Weber is trying to overturn an affirmative action job training program.

“We need these quotas to force corporations to hire Blacks, latinos, and women,” Pulley explained. “With Black unemployment twice that for whites, with three or four times the unemployment rate for Black youth, Blacks are still suffering from discrimination, from the vestiges of slavery and segregation.”

Pointing out how affirmative action strengthens and unifies the labor movement, Pulley said that “a victory for Weber will set the whole union movement back and hurt all working people.”

On March 24 Pulley spoke to 120 members of the American Postal Workers Union about the need for the unions to build a labor party.

The postal workers were attending a three-day conference sponsored by the O’Hare Midway APWU local on the topic, “From Fraternity to Fighter: Seeking Allies.”

Joining Pulley on the platform at the Saturday evening session were Lorenzo Stephens, APWU director for human relations, and Moe Biller, a leader of the 1970 postal strike in the New York area.

Pulley pointed to workers’ growing resistance to the attacks on their rights and living standards: from the shipyard workers’ strike in Newport News, Virginia, to last year’s heroic 110-day coal strike.  
 
April 5, 1954
NEW YORK—Civil strife has gripped and paralyzed this major port. Some 20,000 dock strikers face an unholy combination of shipowners, Republican and Democratic political machines, and a segment of the AFL led by Paul Hall and David Beck, heads of the Seaman’s and Teamster unions.

The strikers’ union leaders are under indictment for defying an anti-labor injunction. Their strike is called a “criminal conspiracy” by Governor Dewey who, with Washington’s approval, promises that the government will “use every weapon at its command to break the strike.” Strikebreakers are herded onto the docks by the AFL leaders and the police are mobilized to intimidate and smash the strikers’ resistance. Mayor Wagner, elected last fall as “labor’s friend,” has left town for a vacation in Bermuda.

The 27-day-old strike was initiated by the ranks of the independent International Longshoremen’s Association, but has now received ILA Council sanction. At issue in this waterfront war is the right of the dockers to a union of their own choice free from coercion and regimentation organized by the State in collusion with the AFL leaders.

The present waterfront crisis was precipitated by the intervention of the AFL leaders, who are seeking to supplant the ILA. The AFL expelled the ILA with the pious declaration that the ILA had failed to “clean its house.” The potentially greatly lucrative prize was then turned over to an AFL committee dominated by Hall and Beck, well-known as aggressive expansionists interested primarily in increasing their own power and prestige.  
 
 
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