John Michael O'Brien

• B.A. Dip.Ed. M.A. PhD.
• The University of Sydney

This study begins with a brief theoretical discussion of the defining features of new public management (NPM) and its employment relations implications. This is followed by analyses of the managerial and union strategies through which change was effected, resisted and negotiated in Australia and New Zealand. The discussion contrasts the approaches...

The article examines changes in the collective regulation of employment relations in the Australian Public Service over the last three decades. While federal Labor Governments in the 1990s briefly experimented with agency bargaining before returning to a service-wide approach to wage bargaining, the Howard Coalition Government encouraged federal pu...

Public sector industrial relations is a somewhat neglected field of investigation. The relative neglect by industrial relations scholars is surprising given that public sector employees in Australia are much more likely to be unionised and work within larger organisations with formalised industrial. Moreover, it has been within public sector enviro...

The paper examines attempts by agency management within the Australian Public Service to implement cultural change strategies in the aftermath of the first round of agreement-making under the Workplace Relations Act 1996. Many agency agreements make reference to cultural change directed towards a high achievement culture as an objective of the agre...

This article explores employee responses to the performance-based pay schemes introduced into the Australian Public service in 1998 and 1999. Many federal public sector employees were aware ofthe subjectivity and enhanced mana gerial discretion inherent in these schemes. In response, employees took the initiative away from supervisors to ensure tha...

The paper argues that when governments seek to regulate the working conditions and wages of their own employees in n decentralising industrial environment there is potential for tension between the roles of government as employer; as policy generator and as financial controller. The paper discusses the federal coalition government's agenda in the A...

The context of the paper is the relationship between the roles of government as an employer, as a prime generator of polivy and as financial controller. The overaching issue is the extent it is possible to match public sector industrial relations with the general policy directions of government while the government maintains overall control of the...

T his paper discusses the strategies adopted by public sector unions following the restructuring of the New Zealand state in the 1980s and the industrial relations reforms of the early 1990s. The discussion is placed within the context of a consideration of the nature of public sector industrial relations and the role of strategy in trade union act...

This paper will discuss the origins and development of the labour market reform agenda pursued by the Business Council of Australia (the council). This agenda found its initial expression in the attempt to apply the McKinsey 'new manage ment' model of employment relations to the regulation of the labour market in Australia. The 'popular' management...

On assuming office in March 1988, the Liberal-National Party appointed John Niland, Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of New South Wales, to prepare a Green Paper on the transformation of industrial relations in New South Wales. Niland has been perhaps the most consistent and longstanding academic advocate of a shift towards colle...

*This is a revised version of a paper given to the Annual Conference of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, Australian National University, 28 November‐2 December 1988.

This work analyses the history of the New South Wales Teachers' Federation from 1957 to 1975. The Federation is one of the largest unions in New South Wales and as an affiliate of the Australian Teachers' Federation, is part of one of the largest industrial organisations of employees in Australia. The period under review was a time of significant e...