Individualism, Union Organisation And Management Prerogatives In The Australian Public Service 1983–2000

Abstract

The paper explores the transformation of workplace-based employment and industrial relations in the Australian Public Service (APS) since 1983 with particular emphasis on developments in enterprise bargaining from service-wide negotiations in the early 1990s to a more concerted focus on agency-level bargaining from the late 1990s under the Workplace Relations Act (1996). This paper argues that this has given rise to a growing individualisation of employment relations and a more aggressive assertion of managerial prerogatives at a workplace level in the APS.