Drew Lewis — transportation secretary for Reagan during air controllers strike
Drew Lewis, who as transportation secretary under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s led contract negotiations with the air traffic controllers union and, when many of its members went on strike, put together a temporary system to keep planes in the air, died Wednesday in Prescott, Ariz. He was 84.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son Andrew Lewis IV, known as Andy, said.
Mr. Lewis, a business executive known for rescuing failing companies, achieved prominence in Pennsylvania politics by successfully managing several House and Senate campaigns for Richard Schweiker, a childhood friend.
His work as state chairman for President Gerald Ford during the 1976 presidential campaign impressed Reagan.
In the next presidential election, Reagan enlisted Mr. Lewis to manage his primary campaign in Pennsylvania. After the nomination was locked up, Mr. Lewis served as second in command of the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee. He was picked to be secretary of transportation immediately after Reagan’s election.
The airline unions presented him with the biggest crisis of his twoyear tenure. He averted a walkout by the Air Line Pilots Association.
In June 1981, he represented the government in contentious negotiations with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, which demanded a shorter workweek and a substantial salary increase.
Mr. Lewis’ contract offer was accepted by the union’s president but overwhelmingly rejected by union members; almost 13,000 of them walked off the job in August, defying a law forbidding strikes by federal employees. Reagan announced that any striker who did not come back to work in 48 hours would be fired, but only about 1,300 controllers returned.
During the strike, Mr. Lewis directed subordinates at the aviation agency to maintain emergency traffic control using personnel borrowed from the armed forces. The pilots union joined with Mr. Lewis to reassure the public that it was safe to fly.
More than 11,000 strikers lost their jobs, and the union was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority. A new union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, emerged to replace it in 1987.
Philosophically opposed to federal regulation and a proponent of free-market solutions, Mr. Lewis cut Amtrak’s budget, tried to free the government from its involvement in the Con- rail freight line and began shifting more of the responsibility for roads and bridges from the federal government to the states.
Andrew Lindsay Lewis Jr. was born on Nov. 3, 1931, in Philadelphia and grew up on a farm in Norristown, Pa. His father ran a trucking business. After graduating from Norristown High School, he attended Haverford College, earning a degree in economics in 1953, and Harvard University’s graduate school of business, where he received a master’s degree in business administration in 1955. He later did postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In addition to his son Andy, Lewis is survived by his wife, the former Marilyn Stoughton; a daughter, Karen Carrier; a son, Russell, known as Rusty; 14 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. A fourth child, Andrew Lewis III, died in infancy.