As Unison’s local government members covered by the National Joint Council (NJC) are balloted over this year’s derisory pay offer, that would deliver a real terms pay cut to the vast majority of workers, a spotlight continues to shine on the pay of chief executives.

Last week the union gave evidence to the communities and local government select committee on this issue.

The MPs on the committee focused mainly on local authorities where there has been some controversy about the high pay granted to the chief executive.

Unison supports the call for sensible pay rates for chief executives – pay rates that recognise the size and complexity of the task, and are fair in comparison to the pay rates of other workers employed by the local authority.

While chief executive pay continues to fall under the microscope, we should remember that thousands of chief officers in local authorities also get a fair amount of stick for the amount they are paid.

But it isn’t as simple as that.

Last year, Unison surveyed local authority chief officers and senior managers across the UK.

From the 800 responses we found that almost half of the chief officers earned between £40,000 and £80,000.

Not poverty pay, clearly, but a world away from the salaries for similar private sector jobs.

In 2012/13, the finance director of the Daily Mail and General Trust Group was paid £1.2m (excluding benefits and shares).

Most local authority finance directors are paid less than a tenth of that and many authorities employ a similar number of staff.

That’s just one example.

The broader point for chief officers is that over the past five years, their pay has stood still while the cost of living has risen by around 20%.

The unions submitted a pay claim this year to try to begin the process of catch-up on the increase in the cost of living, but, so far, in response, the silence from the employers has been deafening.

In his 2011 review of high public sector pay, Will Hutton explored the notion of setting a maximum ratio, from the highest to the median earner of each authority, of 20:1.

He dropped the idea, but subsequent government guidance encouraged authorities to publish their pay ratio.

In fact, the ratio in most local authorities is less than 10:1, but the focus on this ratio diverts attention from the real problem with local government pay: chronic low pay at the bottom end.

Hundreds of thousands of workers providing local government services are paid below the Living Wage (£7.65 and £8.80 in London) and this year, the NJC employers’ side has offered a sub-inflation pay increase of just 1% - with a bit more for those at the very bottom to avoid local government pay at the bottom end falling dangerously close to the national minimum wage.

This is clearly an unacceptable position for the millions of local government workers - most of them women - who provide services in their communities.

All of this goes to show that while we need to monitor chief executive and chief officer pay in local government to make sure it is proportional and set in a transparent manner we must not let that debate be a distraction from the far bigger problem of low pay – in some cases poverty pay – in local government.

We are currently asking our members to vote yes for strike action over local government pay.

We are taking a stand against the years of pay cuts in local government and we are confident that our chief officer members will stand together with our lowest paid members to demand fair pay.

Mike Short is Unison’s senior national officer in local government