From Industrial Relations to Workplace Relations in the Australian Taxation Office: an incomplete but strategic transition.

By Eve Anderson, Julian Teicher and Gerard Griffin

The impact of New Public Sector Management reforms on industrial relations in the Australian Public Service is a neglected area of research.

This paper examines the evolution of industrial relations in the Australian Taxation Office, an organisation that is in transition from a bureaucratised administration to a responsive provider of services. The employment relationship in the ATO has become more flexible and workplace focused, yet many characteristics of a collective form of regulation remains, suggesting an increasingly strategic response to complex demands.

(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 47, no. 3, September 2005; pp339-352)