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An employer had no obligation to make eight workers redundant despite asking them to sign "binding" expressions of interest, a court has ruled.

Workers s-xually harassed before the Secure Jobs, Better Pay changes came into effect in March will have to choose whether to omit complaints for conduct that occurred before that time to use the new provisions, or "make a potentially less advantageous application" using the old provisions, according to an employment law expert.

In an early test of Secure Jobs changes that outlaw pay secrecy mandates, a former casual sales assistant at a landmark Melbourne bookshop has begun legal action in the Federal Circuit Court, alleging it no longer offered her shifts after she disclosed a pay rise and backpay to her fellow workers.

The FWC has refused to suspend engineers' industrial action at a Virgin Australia subsidiary while their employer pursues an intractable bargaining declaration, in an early test of the new Secure Jobs provision.

In a decision highlighting the difficulties that can arise from agreement clauses linked to awards and the NES, the FWC has handed back Simplot workers' arbitration rights for casual conversion disputes but removed mention of their entitlement to access permanency after nine months.

Tugboat operator Svitzer has been ordered to extend a rating's fixed-term contract after the FWC speculated that his senior role at the MUA was the real reason he was the only member of his crew not offered continuing employment.

In the first test of new supported bargaining laws, the FWC will hear in mid-August the landmark application to authorise multi-employer negotiations involving 65 employers and 12,000 workers in the early childhood education and care sector.

Visy workers in South Australia will receive a backdated 8.6% pay boost after the FWC found that their deal's annual rise clause applied the state's CPI figure rather than the lower national inflation rate.

The NTEU is calling on Monash University to rectify $9 million in alleged underpayments to casual teachers after the FWC rejected a bid to retrospectively vary its agreement, while its vice chancellor and soon-to-be Victorian Governor says that without a "grand bargain" their payment systems will remain an "unproductive source of contestation".

Resources giant Santos has been ordered to pay $65,000 to a worker sacked for telling a contractor to "take a sickie" during a strike, the FWC finding the dismissal harsh after weighing his long and unblemished career.