Leading industry analysts say that neither a strike nor a lockout are likely to occur when the current contract between automakers and the United Auto Workers expires in September.

Speaking at the Management Briefing Seminars held in Traverse City, Michigan, the chief economist for the Center for Automotive Research, Sean McAlinden, said he believed chances were good that new contracts would include labor concessions.

Items on the list of possible concessions include increased limits on the Jobs Bank for workers at plants that have gone idle as well as assumption by the unions of responsibility for pension benefits to retired workers.

Because Toyota Motor Corp and other foreign-based automakers pay wages close to the UAW scale, they have been more successful in keeping their workers away from the union and themselves free of union pressure.

The Detroit automakers have not been so lucky even though less than 23 percent of auto workers in the nation actually belong to a union.

According to McAlinden, if newly negotiated contracts do not make significant reductions in the labor costs faced by companies like Ford, the carmakers will have to be back at the negotiating table with the UAW within two years.

The automakers are pinning their hopes on the creation of Voluntary Employee Benefits Associations with the unions. This arrangement would give the companies more flexibility in negotiating contributions to the fund.

The automakers would kick in both cash and stock to the associations with the union managing the assets and paying out the benefits.

Even with these likely concessions, however, the new contract will most likely contain a much-coveted bonus to win approval by the workers.