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BERLIN, June 27 (Reuters) - Negotiations between engineering union IG Metall and employers restarted on Friday with hopes for a deal to end a strike in eastern Germany for shorter hours that has hurt output in the country's key car industry.
Exploratory talks on Thursday between IG Metall union leader Klaus Zwickel and Martin Kannegiesser, head of the Gesamtmetall employers' federation, ended with the two sides still far apart.
As formal negotiations got underway on Friday, IG Metall chief negotiator Hasso Duevel said he hoped for a deal. "We are very interested in solving the conflict here today," he said.
Volkswagen AG said on Friday it had stopped production of its top-selling Golf model at its main Wolfsburg plant in western Germany for lack of parts from the east.
The strike has idled BMW AG plants in western Germany this week as parts from strike-hit eastern factories were not delivered, prompting fears the action could dampen fragile growth in the entire German economy.
The German car industry accounts for 10 percent of total industrial output and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Workers at car and steel plants in the still depressed former communist east have been on strike since early June, demanding a reduction in the working week by three hours to the 35 hours which is standard for their western colleagues.
Employers say the 38-hour week for the 310,000 engineering employees in the east is justified because of lower productivity than in the west. But eastern workers say they feel like second-class citizens 13 years after unification.
IG Metall is demanding a gradual cut in hours which it says is justified by advances in eastern productivity. Faced with little public support for a strike in the most depressed part of Germany, the union has come under pressure to compromise.
Employers continued to reject the union's demands as negotiations, halted six weeks ago, restarted.
"We realised in the exploratory talks that we are still very far from each other," said Roland Fischer, negotiator for the employers, but added that he would not speak of insurmountable hurdles and the outcome of the talks was unknown.
Economists warn that the former east, where the rate of unemployment at about 19 percent is more than double that in the west, risks driving investors further east to neighbouring Poland or the Czech Republic if it pushes up labour costs.
BMW has said the strike might make it reconsider the scale of an investment in the eastern city of Leipzig, where it is building a new factory which was due to create 5,500 jobs.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has urged a speedy end to the strikes so as not to further damage prospects for the already depressed region, was due to hold talks on Friday with trade union leaders including IG Metall head Zwickel.
The trade unions are traditionally close allies of the ruling Social Democrats but relations have soured of late as Schroeder has proposed reforms to welfare benefits and labour laws which the unions say will hurt workers' interests.