IMPACT OF THE UNITED PLAN : NEWS ANALYSIS : Wave of Employee Buyouts Due? : Ownership: Analysts say the proposed United deal could become a model for unionized companies on how to reorganize.

The proposal crafted by United Airlines’ two biggest unions to buy most of the giant air carrier could, if successful, trigger a wave of employee buyouts at other unionized U.S. companies, analysts said Thursday.

Experts said the complicated bid for United, which calls for the unions to grant major wage and work rule concessions, could spur other transportation and manufacturing companies to reorganize along similar lines.

“Finally, America has an example of an alternative to slash-and-burn restructuring,” said Joseph R. Blasi, a Rutgers University expert on employee ownership. “We’re going to see a lot of major companies use this model of restructuring.

Experts noted that the proposal by United’s unionized pilots and machinists for employees to buy at least 53% of the carrier is a landmark agreement partly because of its size. The transaction, valued at $4.55 billion or more, would be more than twice as big as the nation’s largest employee buyout to date.

But perhaps more important, say advocates of employee buyouts, the agreement marks the first time that employees have initiated a buyout of a big, still-healthy company because they want a say in mapping its future, along with saving their jobs.

“You can strike over wages and working conditions, but you can’t strike over business decisions. The unions at United realized they needed a new tactic, and this is it,” said Corey Rosen, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Employee Ownership in Oakland. “If this is successful, other employee groups will want to do it too. If you can do it at United, you can do it anyplace.”

Observers said the proposed United deal--which has yet to win the final approval of the unions or the company’s board--would fall far short of revolutionizing the carrier’s management.

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Even though United’s top two current executives would leave under the deal, “Wall Street analysts are simply and plainly wrong when they suggest that unions would be running this company,” Blasi said.

He cited the sharp drop Thursday in the stock of United’s parent company, UAL, in reaction to news of the buyout plan.

“Employees would have no more than four out of the (12 or 13) board seats, and the sway of power on the board would be in the hands of independent directors,” Blasi said. “That should not be a fear.”

Henry Hansmann, an economist and law professor at Yale University, said the deal appears to be “the only way” United and its unions “could find to renegotiate their labor contracts. And that’s how it should be seen, rather than as a real shift in control.”

In fact, Hansmann said control of the company could become a critical and divisive issue for United later on. He said one key rule of employee buyouts is that they work best when the workers involved have similar economic interests.

Hansmann noted that at United and other airlines, the pilots and machinists unions have often viewed each other as rivals. “Every dollar more that they (machinists) get paid is a dollar less the pilots get paid,” he said.

While conceding that the employee buyout trend is likely to spread, largely as a way to extract wage concessions from unions, Hansmann said its impact will be blunted by the fact that most U.S. companies aren’t unionized.

Employee buyouts are already common in the airline business, which has been hurt in recent years by such factors as high labor costs, low productivity and stiff competition. At United, labor officials were willing to grant wage concessions in exchange for ownership largely because they feared that the carrier was headed toward a restructuring that would eliminate union jobs. In industries with other types of problems, however, experts said employee buyouts might not be an attractive option.

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Still, analysts said, the railroad industry and segments of the high-technology and aerospace businesses could be fertile ground for the trend.

The rise in U.S. employee ownership dates to 1974, when Congress passed legislation granting tax benefits for investment vehicles known as employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs. At first, ESOPs were used mainly to provide employee benefits or to enable the owners of companies to pull cash out of their businesses by selling stock to employees.

In the 1980s, however, employee buyouts became popular as a way of reorganizing and trying to rescue struggling companies. One of the biggest success stories is the Avis car rental company, which was turned around after employees acquired it in 1987 for $1.7 billion.

Still, employee ownership--which, unlike the proposed United deal, normally provides workers with only a minority interest in the company--has a mixed record in reviving businesses. In some cases, the buyouts have failed because of high debt or because the companies involved were in declining industries.

Rosen said employee buyouts have also failed at companies such as Eastern Airlines because executives have stuck with old-fashioned management techniques and failed to let workers participate in running the company.