Robert Stutz, a distinguished arbitrator and mediator, died of cancer on December 6 at his home in Aquinnah, Martha's Vineyard. He was 81.

Stutz was born in Albany, N.Y. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from Colgate University and a master's degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Stutz began his career as a labor arbitrator, mediator and fact finder in 1949. From 1949 to 1972 he taught undergraduate and graduate courses at UConn, and was an administrator, teacher and researcher at the University's Labor-Management Institute from 1948 to 1961. In the late 1960s he was a visiting professor at Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa, and in 1970-71 was a visiting research associate at the International Institute for Labor Studies in Geneva.

"Bob was one of the most judicious, balanced, calm human beings," says David Ivry, emeritus professor of insurance. "There was a wonderful fit between his manner and sense of fairness that really found its place in the arbitration field."

Stutz retired from teaching in 1972 to become a full-time labor arbitrator.

He served as chair of the U.S. Department of Labor's Special Industry Committee on Minimum Wages and was a past president of the committee responsible for drafting a code of professional conduct for labor mediators for the Association of Labor Mediation Agencies. He was a special adviser to the American Arbitration Association's National Center for Dispute Settlement and a consultant to the Ford Foundation in the area of public employee labor relations. As an adviser to the governor of Connecticut, he devised a formal grievance procedure for civil servants in the state.

He also was widely published in professional and technical journals in the field of mediation and labor arbitration. He settled full-time on Martha's Vineyard in the 1970s, and in the late 1980s he served as the Martha's Vineyard member of the Steamship Authority.

Stutz is survived by his wife, Flavia, a son, two daughters and two grandsons.