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ACTU president Ged Kearney might soon be leaving the peak body, if she wins preselection for a Labor heartland seat in the Victorian Parliament that is under threat from the Greens.

The union movement's crucial bid to overturn the cuts to penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors kicks off tomorrow before a rare five-judge full Federal Court.

Andrew Staniforth, the leader of the union for domestic flight attendants, has agreed not to perform his role or enter the union's office as he pursues it in a Federal Court case.

The Coalition's legislation that would raise maximum fines from $750.000 to $10 million for secondary boycotts is no certainty to become law after Nick Xenophon Team senators joined the Greens and Labor to declare it would not support it.

The ACTU has taken aim at the proposed public interest test for union amalgamations, saying there is no basis for the Turnbull Government's claim that it is the equivalent of the competition test for corporate mergers.

The FWC has allowed the Flight Attendants' Association to jettison plans to merge its two divisions, while a former secretary might face penalties after admitting he failed to provide budgets from 2006 to 2012.

The FWC's minimum wage panel has decided against holding a preliminary hearing to consider new research on the budget required to sustain a healthy lifestyle, after the proposal only won support from Catholic employers.

Coles and the SDA have agreed on a draft two-year deal that provides higher penalty rates, but has lower annual pay rises for workers who are already on elevated wage rates.

An FWC full bench is today hearing a challenge to a Registered Organisations Commission ruling that Queensland's Together union breached the registered organisations regulations, exposing it to penalties, when its leader made a "considered decision" to delay lodgement of election information.

The High Court has this morning refused a CFMEU bid for special leave to challenge a full Federal Court majority ruling that increased penalties twelve-fold after after accepting that it could not treat a "lawful request" or a party's motivation for taking coercive industrial action as a mitigating factor when determining fines.