The Structure of Bargaining in Public Hospitals in Three Australian States

This chapter concerns employment relations in the public hospitals of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The main aim of the chapter is to describe and then compare trends in the structure of bargaining in the public hospitals of three Australian states; the ‘structure of bargaining’ being defined as ‘the institutionalized arrangements by which employers and employees determine the terms and conditions of the employment relationship’ (Bray and Waring, 1998). In this context, the focus is mostly on union-management relations and collective bargaining, but at the same time there is a broader subject because these collective forms of regulation in which employees are represented by unions operate alongside individual bargaining, managerial prerogative and state regulation to determine the conditions of employment of public hospital workers.