A number of council workers could get an extra £2,500 in their pockets to avoid possible equal pay claims.
About 36 binmen and street cleaners at South Holland District Council are set for a pay rise of between £52 and £2,516 this year after they were found to be earning different salaries for doing the same work.
District council members vote tomorrow on whether to back the move after a warning from employment officials that they were open to legal action unless salary differences were sorted out.
Most staff affected would see their pay rise between £52 and £200 from April 1, but another five workers would see their pay frozen for two years before a cut of £111 in 2015-16.
The four-year plan to equalise pay will cost the district council almost £20,000 this year, rising to almost £71,500 in 2016-17.
Councillor Roger Gambba-Jones, cabinet member for waste management, said: “When we brought the service back in-house from a private company in 2001, some staff were on its pay rate and others on the local government rate.
“We’ve struggled to find a cost-effective model of changing that, but by reducing the running costs of waste collection, this is a golden opportunity to resolve this unfairness once and for all.”