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Gendered relations to working time and union agreements

Contradictory outcomes in acute and community nursing settings in Australia

Social Health Sciences, Flinders Prevention, Promotion and Primary Health Care, School of Medicine, Flinders University, Sturt Building, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia, eileen.willis{at}flinders.edu.au

Julie Henderson

Public Health, Flinders Prevention, Promotion and Primary Health Care, School of Medicine, Health Science Building, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia

Luisa Toffoli

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100 Adelaide 5001, Australia

Bonnie Walter

School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100 Adelaide 5001, Australia

The intensification of working time is a major impediment to the recruitment and retention of nurses worldwide. This article examines the outcomes of negotiations between the Australian Nursing Federation (South Australia), the major nursing union and the South Australian Government, with a particular focus on working-time tools introduced to deintensify nurses’ labour. The article compares two strategies negotiated by the union: one for public sector nurses working in acute hospitals where the throughput of patients is short term, the other in the community sector where most patients have chronic mental or physical conditions and their care requirements are long term. The outcomes of the two tools for reducing work intensification reflect gendered relations to time, but are contradictory in terms of control over the labour process. The tool used in the acute sector is highly successful in reducing work intensity but shifts control of the labour process to management. The community-based tool provides nurses with control over the labour process, but is less successful in reducing work intensification or working hours.

Key Words: Enterprise Bargaining • gendered time • nursing • work intensity

Time & Society, Vol. 18, No. 2-3, 246-263 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0961463X09337558


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