STUTTGART, Germany, July 22 (Reuters) - Talks over cost cuts at DaimlerChrysler AG are set to resume on Thursday with management and worker representatives inching closer to a deal that could set a trend for longer working hours in Germany.
The talks were adjourned early on Thursday morning after 13 hours and are scheduled to start again at 0800 GMT.
Both sides were hopeful of a deal on Wednesday but a news conference tentatively scheduled by Daimler for Thursday morning was cancelled as talks overnight proved difficult.
"We're dealing with a very complex subject which requires lots of calculations," said Frank Stroh, spokesman for the Baden-Wuerttemberg branch of engineering trade union IG Metall.
The talks followed protests over the last week by tens of thousands of DaimlerChrysler workers alarmed by management demands for 500 million euros in cost cuts per year in Germany.
The company has threatened to shift 6,000 jobs from its main plant at Sindelfingen near Stuttgart to Bremen and South Africa unless workers agree to work longer hours and renounce a series of perks anchored in their local wage agreement.
The dispute comes as pressure mounts on western European employees to work longer, take fewer holidays and do without collective wage agreements to prevent jobs disappearing to cheaper locations in less developed economies.
But it has also sparked renewed debate about high management pay. Bild, Germany's biggest selling newspaper, said on Thursday DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Juergen Schrempp earned 435,000 euros ($534,800) per month, 115 times as much as one of his workers.
"Is that fair?" it asked in a banner headline above a photo of a smiling Schrempp chewing a fat cigar alongside one of a disgruntled-looking Daimler worker wearing a vest.
The German government, trailing in opinion polls and aware of how sensitive the issue of pay is just as its unpopular welfare cuts are beginning to bite, called this week for more transparency and performance orientation in management pay, but added that it was not considering caps on executive salaries.
DaimlerChrysler managers have offered to take a 10 percent pay cut to help resolve the working hours dispute.
The talks at Daimler follow a recent agreement by workers at two Siemens AG mobile phone plants to raise weekly working hours to 40 from 35 without any corresponding pay rise.