In a unique collaboration the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union and Viva Energy’s Geelong Refinery are working together to support gender equality.
Tony - Organiser, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union
"Our union has been around for a long long time, it’s mainly been a male-dominated union. Some time ago we decided to get more women into the industries because the pool of tradesmen is very small now, we’ve got an older workforce so that’s now opened up the door for women to get involved."
"It does open their eyes up, saying ‘well actually I never thought of working in a refinery.’"
James - Head of People & Culture, Refining, Viva Energy, Geelong
"Gender equality is a really important part of our diversity and inclusion program because we want to ensure that we’re providing really good opportunities for women to belong, grow and thrive in our organisation.
We had around five per cent of our population being women and we set ourselves a goal of working towards 40 per cent. When we now look at our cohort of operators that have been with us for up to five years of service 42 per cent of that population are women.
Having fresh thinking and bringing a different perspective to some of the complex challenges that we have here makes us better."
"From a technical point of view more diversity and different perspectives also means that we find better ways of working with each other"
Updated