The difference in pay between senior board members and ordinary workers has widened considerably over the past two years, the Volkskrant reports on Saturday.

The paper bases its claims on an annual research project into wage developments at 129 large Dutch firms.

It found that company chairman earn an average of €1.5m in the Netherlands, while the average worker has a gross salary of €76,000. This means bosses are earning 20 times the average salary, compared with 16 times the average two years ago.

In large multinationals such as Unilever, Shell, Heineken and Reed Elsevier the difference stretches to 100 times, the paper says.

The biggest wage gap last year was at Unilever where chief executive Paul Polmann earned €9.5m, or 273 times the average wage.

Last month Polman told the Washington Post he considered his salary to be generous and he is ‘‘ashamed when the topic comes up’.

‘I always feel embarrassed, to be honest,’ Polman said.