Antiwork

Apologies if this doesn’t belong on Antiwork. There seems to be a huge hard on in the U.K. for job ‘references’. My girlfriend has been having an issue there because amongst other issues she was self employed for many years and at other points occupied in so far as dealing with responsibilities of being a single mother. What’s been happening is that the job has been offered outright but then the employer has been asking for work references later down the line. What is it with employers offering you a position, only to relage on it afterwards? And what is it with this need for references? You aren’t even allowed to write a bad reference in the U.K. so I’m not sure I really get the point. In my case I had a manager that owed me 2 years of unused holidays and redundancy, because I brought it up the…