COUNCIL bosses on six figure salaries are to pocket £1,000 more than cleaners, carers and refuse workers, a new report says.

Chief executives are each to get an annual flat rate increase of £1,600 in the pay deal for Scotland's councils.

However, lower paid workers offered a 3 per cent rise are in line for just £600 extra, it was claimed.

The "disparity" was highlighted in new findings published by the GMB union.

GMB officials say finance secretary Derek Mackay told them in negotiations that the deal gave council workers equal value.

However, the Sunday Herald spoke to home helps, refuse workers and janitors, who said the offer was worth just a few pounds a week to them.

Last night, staff said the deal was an "insult" and "degrading" to them.

The GMB said the biggest cash lift goes to well paid executives rather than workers who have had a decade at the "coal face of austerity".

Nearly all Scotland's 32 local authority chief executives – all of whom are to get a £1,600 flat rate increase - are on annual six figure salaries.

Under the pay deal, the £1,600 flat rate is paid to all those on salaries over £80,000.

There is a 2 per cent offer for all employees earning £36,501 - £80,000.

Workers earning less than £36,500 get 3 per cent under the deal.

However, the GMB said it was worth just a few pounds a week to most of its staff in the 3 per cent bracket.

Last week, nearly 30,000 workers rejected the offer forward by local government body Cosla by a 92 per cent to 8 per cent margin.

The GMB has notified Cosla and the Scottish Government of the rejection of the deal,

Union officials say the dispute could spark a wave of summer strikes.

GMB Scotland senior organiser Drew Duffy said: "They (workers) have been living and working at the coal face of austerity for the last decade, enduring freezes and real-terms cuts to their pay and conditions.

"It is offensive to them when the finance secretary says this offer treats local government staff with "equal value".

Meanwhile, home helps, refuse workers and janitors said the 3 per cent pay offer was derisory.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, staff savaged the deal.

A female home help, who has worked in Glasgow for 20 years, said she was paid between £17,000 and £18,000 a year.

Under the 3 per cent offer, she said any increase would be less than £10 a week.

She said: "What we've been offered is an insult and it's degrading.

"Being a home help is such a wide ranging job and it's not simply caring for someone at home.

"You are not just making someone a cup of tea, you are making sure that they are clean and that they are not lonely.

"Yet what we're getting offered is just a few pounds a week.

"It makes life difficult and a lot of the girls have to take on second jobs."

A rubbish collection worker in Midlothian said he had lost £11,000 due to a decade of austerity and pay restraint.

The worker, who has been in post for 19 years and is on a salary of £22,500, said the deal was "blatantly unfair".

He said a fairer deal would be for the lowest paid to get the £1,600 flat rate, while chief executives get a capped sum of about £250.

"The 3 per cent increase is making no impact at all," he said.

He added: "We've lost £11,000 in the last 10 years of austerity, so 3 per cent is nothing.

"It's been happening year in year out. It's penny pinching by the government."

Another council worker said pay restraint meant she had been forced to go without holidays.

The woman, a security assistant in Aberdeen on annual pay of £20,000, said she would be just a few pounds better off under the deal.

She said: "For the past 10 years we've had to accept low pay while the cost of living goes up higher than that.

"Council rent also goes up and it's a real struggle to survive on the cash you are on.

"With holidays if I scrimped and saved, I might get a week's holiday and I did last year, but not this year."

The security worker said the pay hikes for chief executives should be clawed back and redistributed among lower paid workers.

She said: "They are not having any hardship and there is question of do they really need that."

A janitor who has worked in North Lanarkshire for 19 years said she would get just a few extra pounds on added to her £21,000 salary under the deal.

She said: "The pay gap has got ridiculously big.

"There are a lot of people working who still can't feed their kids."

In response, a Scottish Government spokesman said: “Pay for local government employees, other than teachers, is negotiated between the unions and Cosla and the Scottish Government is not part of that process.”

Cosla's resources spokeswoman Gail Macgregor added: “It’s the role of any trade union to seek to improve the terms and conditions of their members and I entirely get that, however, councils have to operate within the budget available to them”.