Former U.S. Transportation Secretary and Union Pacific Chairman and CEO Andrew Lindsay “Drew” Lewis, Jr. died Feb. 10 in Prescott, Ariz. He was 84.
Lewis was best known to the general public for his role in the 1981 air traffic controller’s strike, while Transportation Secretary in the Reagan Administration. Wrote The New York Times in his obituary:
“The airline unions presented him with the biggest crisis of his two-year tenure. He averted a walkout by the Air Line Pilots Association, and earned the union’s valuable good will, when he agreed to reconsider a proposal by the Federal Aviation Administration to allow airplanes to fly with two crew members rather than three. 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’s contract offer was accepted by the union’s president but overwhelmingly rejected by union members; nearly 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. Replacement controllers were trained quickly at the administration’s academy in Oklahoma City, and 50 small airports were temporarily shut down. 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.”
Lewis also generated controversy in the railroad arena. As Railway Age Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner wrote in his book, Railroad Mergers: History, Analysis, Insight:
“As Ronald Reagan’s transportation secretary (1981-1983), Lewis—once a trustee of bankrupt Reading Railway—proposed selling then federally owned Conrail in pieces on the theory that a stand-alone Conrail couldn’t achieve profitability and should be given no chance to do so. How wrong he proved to be, as Conrail was privatized in 1986, became quite profitable, and was the subject of a spirited bidding war before being divided between CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1998. Lewis became Union Pacific chairman in 1987, succeeding John Kenefick, and served in that role until December 1996.
“In 1995, during congressional debate to shutdown the Interstate Commerce Commission and shift railroad merger responsibility to the Justice Department, Union Pacific, with Lewis as chairman, feared that UP’s intended merger with Southern Pacific was in danger. Lewis, leveraging his impressive Republican credentials and congressional contacts from his DOT leadership days, went to work convincing lawmakers to preserve ICC merger authority within an independent Surface Transportation Board, as was provided by the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995.
“Reported Business Week magazine, ‘Convinced that [an independent STB] would be more likely to approve his controversial bid for Southern Pacific than the trustbusters at the Justice Department, Lewis left little to chance. From making UP’s pitch directly to House Speaker Newt Gingrich to attending obscure subcommittee meetings, Lewis personally led UP’s legions of lobbyists.’ Fewer than seven months into its life, and with Lewis sitting in the front row observing, the three member STB voted unanimously to approve the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger.
Just two years earlier in 1994, and before setting his eyes on Southern Pacific, Lewis led UP in offering $4 billion in cash in an attempt to outbid Burlington Northern for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, saying, “There’s never going to be another Santa Fe on the market.” But four months into a proxy fight, after Santa Fe’s leadership rejected the UP offer, UP retreated, and BN gained the prize, becoming BNSF in mid-1995.”