Trade union Verdi would consider accepting variable pay and longer working hours as part of ongoing talks with Deutsche Telekom, a union leader involved in the dispute with Europe's biggest telecoms group said in a newspaper interview on Saturday.
Telekom's Chief Executive said separately he could envisage offering better profit sharing possibilities to employees. The union will uphold threats to strike if the two sides fail to agree over the terms of the company's plans to move 50,000 call centre staff to lower-paying units.
The daily Die Welt asked Lothar Schroeder, the leader of Verdi in the talks, whether his union might accept a longer 38-hour week if Telekom did not cut salaries while introducing a higher share of variable pay.
"I would be ready to discuss variable pay as an incentive," said Schroeder. "And I would also talk about a limited extension of working hours." Schroeder also said the union had enough funds to finance months of strike action.
Deutsche Telkom is battling an exodus of customers to cheaper rivals. Fixed-line sales, including traditional voice telephony and Internet broadband, fell 5 percent to 24.7 billion euros in 2006.
Staff in the dispute have so far staged brief walkouts. Telekom's Chief Executive Rene Obermann in advance excerpts of an interview due to appear on Sunday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) signalled a desire to resolve the dispute.