AlterEgo
Veteran Member
If you havent got a Guarantee of employment, you wont be able to get a mortgage, you wont be able to get a loan and you wont be able to get credit cards.
That's not correct at all.
If you havent got a Guarantee of employment, you wont be able to get a mortgage, you wont be able to get a loan and you wont be able to get credit cards.
If you havent got a Guarantee of employment, you wont be able to get a mortgage, you wont be able to get a loan and you wont be able to get credit cards.
Utter tosh.
Its a popular myth though. I was told many times that people in fixed term contracts couldn't get a mortgage, often as part of a narrative of how the job market was still terrible etc etc. When I was ready to buy my first home last year I found out that Halifax, Natwest, TSB and Nationwide all provided mortgages as long as you have 6 months on your contract.
You may be operating in a deeper version of pedant mode than I was. My meaning was clear enough, I think.
If you havent got a Guarantee of employment, you wont be able to get a mortgage, you wont be able to get a loan and you wont be able to get credit cards. These are same of the most fundamental things people require these days. I recently applied for a credit card and one of the things they asked was 'Is your employment status likely to change in the next year' if i said i am likely to be made redundant or i am only on a six month contract the application would of been declined.
I think we're conflating two different issues here. There is a difference between permanent employment (as opposed to temporary, fixed term, contract or casual work) and a "job for life". The former is what we're talking about here, not the latter. Any promise that there will be no job losses does not equate to a promise of a job for life. Even in permanent employment there is no protection against your job changing or even disappearing altogether.
I recently applied for a credit card and one of the things they asked was 'Is your employment status likely to change in the next year' if i said i am likely to be made redundant or i am only on a six month contract the application would of been declined.
With the announcement today in regards to Southern Guards/OBS being stripped of their safety critical status, what message does that send out in regards to the ongoing talks between the TUC and Aslef?
“I am distressed to have received reports of actions taken by the company against staff who have been forced into the OBS role and are now having their guard’s license/certification cards, detailing their safety critical competencies, withdrawn. RMT members have been expressing directly to me their shock and distress at this step taken by the company. Many of these staff have 30+ years service with the railway and I believe this move is designed to undermine the confidence of these staff and is leading to them experiencing demoralisation and humiliation.
A Southern spokesman said:
“The conductors in question stopped dispatching trains on 1 January so they no longer need to hold those licences and our new On-Board Supervisors are not required to maintain them. This is yet another attempt at mischief-making by the RMT."
True it was certainly very widely reported across the media at the time that you'd need to produce things including a fair number of previous verifiable payslips etc to stand a chance of qualifyingThese kinds of questions are a reaction to regulations introduced a couple of years ago, which oblige lenders to make further enquiries of the "sustainability" of an applicant's income.
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Probably needed to word it more clearly.
This announcement sent out by RMT today says to me that the axing of the guard won't be reversed as a result of the current talks which some were hoping.
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Probably needed to word it more clearly.
This announcement sent out by RMT today says to me that the axing of the guard won't be reversed as a result of the current talks which some were hoping.
If that's the case then this practice will spread countrywide to other TOCs.
True it was certainly very widely reported across the media at the time that you'd need to produce things including a fair number of previous verifiable payslips etc to stand a chance of qualifying
Which was very wide of the mark!
Having held a lendng approval authority running into hundreds of thousands of pounds with a mainstream lender, I can assure you that the number of secured lending cases requiring more than 3 months worth of payslips was very small, and the number of cases requiring anything more than a letter from the employer was vanishingly small.
In unsecured lending, the number of cases requiring any documentation to be submitted whatsoever were vanishingly small.
With the announcement today in regards to Southern Guards/OBS being stripped of their safety critical status, what message does that send out in regards to the ongoing talks between the TUC and Aslef?
I would point out that Southern conductors (presumably the role you refer to with the word "guards") are not being stripped of their licences. If that was the case, it would basically cause them to be made redundant on the spot, as those who are currently conductors (retained from 1 January) wouldn't have a guaranteed OBS or other onboard role to go to.
Only ex-conductor OBSs are involved in this issue, and I'm surprised this action wasn't undertaken as soon as they started working under their new contracts last month, as there never seemed to be any intention of continuing their competencies as conductors. Indeed it is something of a liability to allow them to go around with a piece of plastic that lets them work a train as a conductor, presumably without a job description which actually permits them to do it. If they ended up using that competency and something went wrong while they did so, I have no idea how that would stand up to scrutiny, but I suspect the answer is "not very well"!
Is there a prize, perhaps at the National Rail Awards, for 'TOC held in greatest contempt by it's staff, passengers, the unions and just about everybody who has anything whatsoever to do with them or the railway in general'...? I can't really think of what else Hooray Horton and his band of merry incompetents might be hoping to achieve, or is widespread ridicule his thing?!
An interesting observation on these hypothetical prizes to which you allude, could well also be a prize for "The most poorly worded trades union press release issued in 2016". I wonder if anyone can think of any trades union who would be well in the running to win that prize?
I'd have thought a proven record of good customer service, attendance and ticket selling skills etc would probably be higher on the list of a rival TOCs recruitment criteria, as the initial safety training course is well established and can be completed in a raeasonably short period of time for most new recruitsCould one reason for the withdrawal of the licenses be that it would make it more difficult for a rival TOC to poach the employee and place them quickly into a traditional guard role?
Could one reason for the withdrawal of the licenses be that it would make it more difficult for a rival TOC to poach the employee and place them quickly into a traditional guard role?
Well - apart from trains running on Absolute Block lines - the traditional role of the Guard has all but disappeared.
Thanks for explaining, what's the difference between an Conductor OBS and a Guard?
RMT stated all guards were becoming OBS, I'm confused.