BERLIN, June 24 (Reuters) - Facing intense criticism for a regional strike causing disruptions across Germany, engineering union IG Metall said on Tuesday it would suspend the walkout at a key eastern plant and was ready to resume talks.
IG Metall said the strike in formerly communist eastern Germany, aimed at cutting weekly working hours from 38 hours to match the 35-hour week in the west, would be halted at the car parts supplier ZF Friedrichshafen, a step that may allow southern German carmaker BMW AG to resume production.
It was also seen by union officials as a gesture that IG Metall was interested in creating a positive climate for the next round of talks, expected to begin on Thursday or Friday.
The strike had been going on in the east for the last three weeks but did not draw much nationwide attention until it forced a halt to production on Monday at BMW's Munich factory, where it builds 800 of its 3-Series cars per day and in Regensburg, where it makes 850 of the mid-sized cars.
Even though only 9,440 eastern German workers are on strike, about 10,000 western German workers were idled by the strike, which is now threatening to hit the fragile economy with a heavy blow to the vital car industry -- a major export industry.
The growing impact of the strike, along with increasing appeals from political leaders to end the dispute, raised pressure for a settlement on the two sides, which signalled on Tuesday they would resume their stalled talks later this week.
"In this individual case we decided on a suspension (of strike action)," IG Metall chairman Klaus Zwickel said on the sidelines of a union meeting in the southwestern town of Sindelfingen.
ZF supplies gearboxes for BMW cars and the strike at its plant had made it impossible for BMW to carry on producing.
Zwickel said IG Metall was considering making similar moves at other eastern Volkswagen plants in Chemnitz and Mosel.
Engineering employers said they hoped to resume talks on Thursday or Friday with IG Metall to try and end strike action.
"The negotiations will be resumed and the employers are ready," said Werner Riek, spokesman for the employers' group Gesamtmetall. He said they would probably begin in or near Berlin on Thursday or Friday.
IG Metall spokesman Claus Eilrich said the union would not be able to agree on a date to resume talks until Wednesday.
IG Metall has said it was ready to consider cutting the working week in stages and at varying speeds depending on the economic position of individual plants.
Engineering workers in the east currently work three hours longer a week than their counterparts in the west, a difference employers say is justified because of lower productivity. Eastern workers complain they feel like second-class workers nearly 13 years after German unification.
Unemployment in the former Communist east is about 20 percent. Carmaker BMW AG has said the strike might make it reconsider the scale of investment in the eastern city Leipzig, where it is building a new factory due to create 5,500 jobs.
The German car industry accounts for 10 percent of total industrial output and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement warned on Tuesday that Germany's standing as a place to do business and invest in was at risk from the engineering strike. Clement said he was aware it was unusual for politicians to intervene in labour disputes.
"But this is so unusual that I see it as my duty to warn that Germany's standing as a business location and especially eastern Germany's standing must not be allowed to be endangered," he said.