Collective Bargaining for Police and Other Essential Services

This book examines how collective bargaining disputes are resolved among police and essential service employees.

In Australia, as in other common law countries, police and other highly essential employees such as fire-fighters and ambulance officers have long had access to a form of binding arbitration to settle collective bargaining disputes. The traditional arbitration-based system in Australia has, however, been replaced in recent decades with a marked-based collective bargaining system. The current (Fair Work) system restricts access to arbitration, favouring collective bargaining based on the parties’ prerogative to make their own agreements, and supported by a limited right to industrial action — including strikes — during bargaining. Yet, police officers, particularly, are subject to considerable restraints on any entitlement to participate in industrial action. The problem is that with limited access to arbitration, and an especially limited right to industrial action, intractable disputes may continue indefinitely, without any impasse-breaking process to prevent the flow-on harms of long-running police disputes. This raises the essential question underpinning this study: what form of dispute resolution system is appropriate to protect both the legitimate industrial interests of police officers, and the community’s interest in the uninterrupted provision of essential policing services?

The author in his extensive field-work research and his study of international case studies has developed a useful model for mandatory interest arbitration among police and other essential services personnel. The lessons and recommendations in the book offer insights for essential services labour law in Australia and overseas.