PUBLIC-SECTOR workers deserve to know their bosses’ eyewatering rates of pay, the Scottish Greens have said in a call for “top and tail” figures.

Forty-three of Scotland’s chief executives in state agencies are raking in six-figure salaries, the party’s researchers revealed yesterday, with some making more than a dozen times what they offer to ordinary workers.

The median salary in Scotland is £26,000 a year. In comparison a water treatment operator at Scottish Water is paid around £14,000.

But Scottish Water’s paymasters had handed its former CEO Richard Ackroyd between £350,000 and £400,000 in 2011-2012, about 27 times what his workers at the treatment plants earned.

NHS Lothian’s chief executive James Barbour had enjoyed a pay package of between £190,000 and £195,000, each night taking home the pay it would take 13 days’ work to earn for one of his nursing assistants.

The Scottish Greens’ finance spokesman Patrick Harvie urged SNP ministers to back a motion on Wednesday ordering the release of data comparing pay at the very top of public-sector organisations with those at the bottom.

“If we want a fair and successful society we must close the gap between the highest and lowest incomes,” he said.

A Scottish government spokesman said the introduction of a living wage policy in the public sector demonstrated that ministers took low pay “very seriously.”

“We encourage all companies to pay their employees the living wage and senior executives should be mindful of the current economic climate when considering pay policy,” he said.