Adolph Koven; Helped Resolve Critical Strikes

Adolph M. Koven, a nationally known labor arbitrator and mediator who helped resolve several critical strikes in Los Angeles during his lengthy career, has died in a San Francisco hospital after surgery for an aneurysm on his aorta.

Koven, a lawyer who began his career with the National Labor Relations Board in 1943, was 72 when he died March 18, said his daughter, Judy.

Winner of the 1987 Distinguished Service Award from the American Arbitration Assn., he also taught labor law, locally at the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations and in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had lived.

Author of several books on labor law, his opinions had appeared in nearly 100 volumes of arbitration decisions and he was the featured arbitrator in two films used as training devices by his profession.

His major involvements included the chairmanship of the San Francisco Municipal Employee Relations Panel in 1974-76; as special mediator in the lengthy Southern California Rapid Transit District strike of 1974; the 1956 labor dispute between the Southern California Food Employers Council and the Retail Clerks Union, and his heading of the state’s Mercantile Wage Board in 1963.

When Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him mediator in the 1974 RTD strike, The Times called Koven “one of California’s most respected and experienced labor negotiators. . . .”

Besides his daughter, he is survived by his longtime companion, Ruth Maguire, and a sister, who ask contributions in his name to the American Civil Liberties Union.