Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has called on the Prime Minister to reverse a pay cut to cleaners in Parliament House and other government buildings.

Mr Shorten said workers were losing up to $6000 a year after the government scrapped the Commonwealth Cleaning Services guidelines in 2014.

The cost of reinstating them would be “negligible” but ensure about 1000 cleaners were paid properly, he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.

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“(They’re) not the biggest group of people in Australia, not the most famous group of people in Australia, but certainly among the hardest-working group of people in Australia,” he said, flanked by a handful of cleaners.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash labelled Mr Shorten’s press conference the most “disgraceful” statement ever given by a person in Parliament House.

“Bill Shorten is the only person in the Australian parliament who has a record of stripping, slashing and taking the penalty rates of cleaners,” she said, in reference to the Opposition Leader’s time as leader of the Australian Workers Union.

Ms Cash also said that the cleaning guidelines Mr Shorten, and Labor’s employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, referred to, never applied to the cleaners in Parliament.

“Quite frankly he was using them for purely political purposes,” she said.