The work of teachers is often understood primarily in relation to student learning rather than as a form of labour for the worker in question. While such a focus is understandable, it can fail to recognize the relationship between conditions of work and the character or nature of that work. In this article, we engage with the issue of teachers' work and workload, presenting interview data from 31 teachers across the state of NSW, Australia. Locating these data within a devolved public education policy context, we argue that increased accountability primarily through paperwork and reporting requirements are operating to re-shape and re-define what it means to be a teacher, and what teachers "do". Such demands are reported to have created a substantial workload increase across the board in our sample, leading to a perceived need for teachers to undertake "triage" in their work, leaving some -- if not all -- activities ultimately incomplete. We explore these tensions in the data and raise questions about the forms of labour teachers currently undertake in schools; why they do so; and whether such work is either desirable or sustainable.