COUNCIL workers will learn by the end of the year if they are "winners or "losers" under a far reaching re-think on wages.

Hyndburn borough chiefs and union bosses have interviewed 650 staff, from cleaners to senior managers, as part of an agreement hammered out nationally in the mid 1990s.

Councils which signed up must apply objective criteria to all wage levels, replacing previous haphazard ways of calculating salaries.

The criteria will create standardised pay scales in a move which resembles the regrading of NHS workers.

At Hyndburn, one of the region's biggest employers, each of the 350 categories of jobs was scored according to 13 factors, with the best paid jobs getting about 800 points and the least paid about 250.

7 An independent job evaluator was brought in to operate specially formulated software to calculate a lower, higher or similar salary for each worker.

Workers dissatisfied with the result can appeal to a panel of trade unionists and managers. Hyndburn will be the first council in East Lancashire to finish its evaluation.

Unison Branch Secretary John Davey said: "Normally about 20 per cent of employees have a wage cut, 20 per cent a rise, with the other 60 per cent staying the same, but we shall have to wait and see what happens here.

"There will be some protection for those people who lose out, with reductions being phased in over several years."

Council manager Mike Chambers said: "In the short run, this may turn out to be costly exercise if we have to increase the total wage bill by a large amount. But in principle this is a good thing and we want a fair deal for all of our workers."