SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -Sam Kagel, the mediator who helped resolve the 1982 NFL strike, has died. He was 98.
He died May 21 in San Francisco of old age, his son, John Kagel, said Thursday.
Sam Kagel was a prominent labor mediator and arbitrator whose career dated to dockworker strikes in the 1930s, but he was best known for his involvement with the NFL.
In the football strike’s third week, the league and the players union agreed to bring Kagel on. He helped salvage the season, though just nine out of a scheduled 16 games were played. He remained the league’s lead arbitrator until his retirement in the summer of 2005, John Kagel said in a telephone interview.
He was also chief arbitrator from 1948-2002 for the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. In 1934, he helped organize a dockworkers’ strike that turned into a general strike in San Francisco.
Sam Kagel also taught at the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
“People found him to be the kind of person they’d entrust very important matters in their lives to, and he’d decide it as fairly as he could and with as much integrity as possible,” John Kagel said.
Kagel is survived by his wife, Jeanne Ames, a family mediator; sons John and Peter; daughter Katharine Kagel; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
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