RMT has been warning for months that unscrupulous employers in the transport and maritime industries would use the cloak of the Covid crisis as a cynical opportunity to hammer down on our jobs and wages and in the past weeks that co-ordinated attack has gathered pace.

On our railways, Scotrail, South Western Railways and LNER have all begun mapping out savage cuts agendas that we know will hit jobs. 

Network Rail is grinding on with its own plans that we have repeatedly warned will have severe consequences for services and safety‎. Our pledge to fight these cuts with every tool at our disposal remains top of the trade union’s agenda.

The fact that these cuts are being rolled out when the government rail minister himself has admitted that he expects passenger numbers to return to pre-Covid levels shows that they are nothing to do with the needs of the service and everything to do with the opportunism of rogue employers seeking to exploit the pandemic for their own purposes.

The nonsense of the assault on pay is demonstrated by the exodus of bus drivers that is leaving bus companies unable to run services. 

This rank stupidity has led to RMT launching an industrial and political campaign on Stagecoach designed to expose the profiteering of the company, its impact on the public who rely on bus services and to secure pay justice for our members.

Transport poverty remains a huge issue in many of our communities. Buses are often a lifeline and help break the cycle of isolation and loneliness. 

To see them undermined in this fashion is truly appalling and just highlights the need for an integrated and publicly owned transport system that puts accessibility before the profits of the private operators.

There is a huge amount of work going on in the union to tackle head-on the threats we face right across the board. 

I would pick out some of our groundbreaking campaigning work on the shipping and offshore sector and would like to take this opportunity to thank every single activist who has risen to the unprecedented challenge we now confront and for the support we have attracted from across the labour movement.

When the SNP attempted to use COP26 as a tool to try ‎and bully our members out of disputes that are about nothing more than their livelihoods and living standards, fellow trade unionists rushed to our defence. 

It was appalling opportunism on the part of the Scottish political establishment and it has come back to haunt them.

We know that rail jobs are green jobs and yet we are facing a barrage of attacks that will simply force more people into their cars and onto the streets. 

That makes a total nonsense of the government’s own stated policy objectives and RMT will be exposing it at every opportunity.

Anyone who saw the pictures of water flooding the New York subway and read of the heroic efforts of our brothers and sisters from TWU Local 100 in rescuing commuters will know only too well what climate change means in practice.

Parallel to the pay freeze and threat to jobs the same employers are eyeing up our pensions. 

Some of our political opponents have long despised the fact that the unions have been successful in securing dignity for many of our members in retirement. 

It’s one of our greatest achievements and they hate it. They now see an opportunity. We have to stand as a united ‎force in pushing back those pension raiders on yet another front.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to our members on Scotrail and East Midlands Railway who have been engaged for many months now in strikes for pay justice, equality and safety. 

You are a credit to the entire trade union movement and your resilience, determination and solidarity is a lesson to us all in these difficult days.

Mick Lynch is general secretary of RMT.