Workers for Consolidated Property Services have threatened to take industrial action at more than a dozen city office blocks as part of their campaign for a pay rise and better working conditions.

Buildings that will be targeted include Casselden Place on Lonsdale Street, which houses the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and 50 Lonsdale Street, home to the Department of Health.

United Voice said affected workers voted in favour of unlimited bans on restocking bathrooms, cleaning toilets, removing rubbish and vacuuming because the company refused to budge during negotiations for a new enterprise agreement.

On Tuesday morning cleaners handed out hygiene kits to workers at the Optus Centre on Collins Street, which has been flagged as one of the buildings to be hit. Freshwater Place and 101 Collins Street have also been named as targets of the industrial action.

The union said cleaners wanted the company to sign a deal that included a 3 per cent pay rise for each of the next four years and commit to end exploitation of foreign students. It said another Melbourne cleaning company had already committed to the deal, but that it was contingent on six other companies including Consolidated also coming on board.

Consolidated is offering a 2.4 per cent pay rise to workers. The company employs more than 400 cleaners at 28 buildings in the city.

"Consolidated is the biggest company standing in the way of us putting an end to the chronic rip-offs of international students in city office cleaning and winning wage justice for cleaners generally," United Voice assistant secretary Ben Redford said in a statement.

"Cleaners are absolutely essential to the running of this city, but they don't get the recognition and the rewards they deserve. They are an invisible workforce. It's only when they don't do the job that they get noticed."

The union has not said when the bans will take effect.

Consolidated Property Services has been contacted for comment.