Searching for the hospital yardstick: a case study of private hospital productivity bargaining.
The decentralisation of Australia's centralised wage fixation system has been seen as providing opportunities for employers and trade unions to tailor working arrangements to suit the needs of the workplace and to provide better paid long-term jobs. This paper details the productivity bargaining between the Private Hospitals' Association of Queensland and The Australian Workers' Union in 1995-97 in Queensland that led to the introduction of a number of productivity-based enterprise agreements. The case study shows that productivity bargaining in the private hospitals studied remains focused on 'bottom line' issues where cashable savings can readily be generated. The paper concludes with an examination of the lessons drawn from the productivity bargaining process.
Timo
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School of Marketing and Management, Faculty of Business and Hotel Management, Griffith University.
D003098:Collective Bargaining; D017046:Cost Savings; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D016304:Hospitals, Private / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D017008:Negotiating; D011793:Queensland; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits; D000078329:Workforce