City of Greater Geelong employees delivered a 51.8% yes vote on their new enterprise agreement, with 1,596 employees participating in the vote over the past week.
This more than doubled the participation in the 2021 enterprise agreement vote, which had 793 employees vote.
City of Greater Geelong chief executive Ali Wastie:
We have an incredibly committed workforce who are deeplypassionate about delivering for the community of Greater Geelong.The incredible voter turnout is double what we saw in 2021 and demonstrates how invested the City's employees are in making the organisation the highest-performing and best local government in the country to work for – this fills me with great optimism about our future.
We acknowledge that the outcome was close, driven by a 'no' campaign by the Australian Services Union, but we continue to be optimistic about working consultatively with employees and their representatives over the lifetime of the new agreement.
We have a strong relationship with our workforce and union representatives, which means we're in constant communication about how we can make our workplaces the best they can be – this will continue for the duration of our new agreement.
One of the things I'm most proud of is the de-gendering of our parental leave clauses. Childcaring shouldn't automatically fall to the mother – the fathers in our workplace want to be part of their children's early stages too and be supported to take equal caring roles. We're helping that happen at the City by improving our support to all new parents, regardless of their gender.
If you've ever been considering a career in local government – now's the time!
