John Lawe; Head of Transit Workers Union

John Lawe, an Irish immigrant who rose from bus cleaner to become president of the International Transport Workers Union, died at his Bronx home Thursday after a long bout with cancer. He was 69.

A soft-spoken man with a lilting brogue, Lawe led transit workers in New York City on a disastrous 11-day strike in 1980 that shut down the bus and subway system and brought Mayor Edward I. Koch to the Brooklyn Bridge to announce to thousands of commuters walking to work that he would refuse to give in to union demands.

It was a costly walkout that saw the government impose $1 million in fines against the union under a state law that restricts strikes in the public sector. The union was all but broken and won few, if any, concessions.

The union eventually agreed to contract language that, in essence, gave up its right to strike.

Born in Ireland, Lawe came to the United States in 1949 and got a job as a bus cleaner at the now defunct Fifth Avenue Coach Co.

Despite his leading the 1980 strike, Lawe was considered a conservative force in the once-militant union and was seen as part of the old guard of Irish-American labor leaders in a union whose membership by the 1970s was heavily black and Latino.

In 1985, Lawe became president of the union’s international, only the fourth TWU leader since it was founded in 1934. He will be replaced by the union’s executive vice president, George Leitz, union officials said.