Prof Kerley said unions signed up to the pay scheme six years ago

Under the scheme, which was agreed six years ago, it has been estimated that about 2,000 workers at the authority face a cut in their salaries.

Local government expert, Professor Richard Kerley, said the review, which all councils must undertake, could mean particularly dramatic cuts in Aberdeen.

This, he said, may be due to the "tight" labour market in the city.

Prof Kerley, of Queen Margaret University College, said: "My suspicion is that what may have happened in Aberdeen is that with 25 to 30 years of booming prosperity wage levels locally may have got out of line with other levels of pay in local government elsewhere within Scotland.

Very simple, crude discrimination in pay is a thing of the past in local government. Prof Richard Kerley

"After all, Aberdeen has had a very tight labour market for many years and the temptation has always been in a tight labour market to push wages up a little bit here, to add on a bonus payment there, to make things very complicated.

"When you try and sort all of that out, then you run into precisely this kind of difficulty."

Prof Kerley told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that this may have resulted in a " more exaggerated" problem in Aberdeen.

'Different pay'

He said the intention of the single status scheme, which received agreement from all councils about six years ago, was to create "more of a level playing field between different types of jobs".

"Including those types of jobs which, for example, traditionally employed men and those which traditionally employed women," said Prof Kerley.

"Very simple, crude discrimination in pay is a thing of the past in local government. You don't find two people doing the same job having dramatically different pay because one is female.

"What you do find is that there is no great equivalence between jobs which, when you come to assess them in detail, actually have more in come than at first appeared.