Clerical workers at The Age have taken protected industrial action outside the new headquarters in Collins St, Melbourne, after newspaper management allowed negotiations to break down.

Workers are taking action after the newspaper’s management refused to budge on a 2.25% wage offer, and insisted on a flexibility clause that would allow overtime and other conditions to be taken away from individual workers.

AMWU Organiser, Nadia Machlouch said that the 100 workers had received lower pay rises than other Age and Fairfax staff in previous years and were no longer prepared to miss out.

“We are asking the company to come to the table with a realistic offer that recognises the hard work of these employees”.

“We are concerned that the company wants to include a ‘flexibility clause that will allow it to take away individual worker’s conditions after a collective agreement was signed.

Workers rally to support their fight for a fair collective agreement at The Age.

Negotiations with The Age’s management have been ongoing since February, 2009, and workers have voted down three offers with the flexibility clause so far.

“Other parts of Fairfax have not included this flexibility clause and there is no need to insist on it for these workers”.

Staff representatives, Denise Porter and Christopher Leung were among 40 workers who rallied outside their workplace. More workers plan to take action on Thursday.

“We’re serious," said Denise. “Hopefully management get the message that we’re going to stand up for ourselves."

Mr Leung said that workers weren’t happy with the way management had conducted negotiations.

“In every meeting that we have when we start here, we’re told that The Age stands for professionalism, integrity – that we’re a part of Melbourne, but in these negotiations we haven’t seen professionalism, loyalty or any sort of behaviour that lines up to those values.”

“There has been no negotiation. If the management aren’t happy with something that we’ve put to them, they’ve made it clear that they won’t even discuss it.

Ms Porter said that management negotiation style had been to bring a ‘baseball bat’ approach to the meetings.

Staff were also upset that over the refusal to offer more than a 2.25% pay increase, citing the recent multi-million dollar payouts to former Fairfax CEO David Kirk and other executives as a double standard.