RMT has been through a challenging year, fighting on several fronts in defence of transport, maritime and energy workers and their jobs, pay and conditions in an increasingly hostile environment.

The ruling class and their government are clearly prepared to use all political and legal means to drive down wages and slash jobs in the face of the cost-of-living crisis; they want workers to pay the price, not their friends in the City.

In the face of Tory attacks, RMT members have displayed magnificent solidarity and commitment to the national rail dispute, and it has been that steadfastness which has stopped the companies and the government from driving on with the imposition of planned cuts and changes to conditions.

Over 20,000 RMT rail workers took strike action earlier this month in the latest phase of the national industrial dispute across the train operating companies.

The RMT strike, between two Aslef strike days, demonstrated that the entire railway workforce remains committed to the dispute, to protecting the future of workers in the industry and to winning a fair deal.

The initial stance of the government and the Rail Delivery Group included a derisory pay offer, bringing in driver-only operation in every company, closure of every ticket office on the network, cutting thousands of jobs including catering services, and attacking pensions.

This union could not accept this wholesale attack on workers and this has been backed by RMT members in three separate ballots which has stopped these detrimental measures being introduced.

However, despite repeated statements from the union that we are willing to enter further negotiations, neither the rail operators nor the government are prepared to meet us. As a result of this inaction, RMT members working across 14 train operating companies will take further strike action on July 20, 22 and 29.

Tube workers have also extended their mandate for strike action on London Underground with a huge 96 per cent vote for action. RMT members are in dispute with Transport for London over jobs, cuts, and attacks on pensions and working conditions.

The response of the government is to attempt to bring in more draconian, anti-democratic and ultimately unworkable legal requirements for minimum service levels to make strike action unlawful.

These plans to effectively conscript bus, Tube and rail workers against their will to work will only serve to sour industrial relations even further and create the conditions for more strife. These plans are a profound attack on the basic human rights of workers and have no place in a civilised society.

According to an RMT survey, the relentless transport cuts agenda has led to an explosion of assaults on bus workers. Lots of abuse and violence originates from the frustrations of passengers who use clapped-out but expensive services that are constantly under threat of closure.

Any abuse towards transport workers should not be tolerated and all instances of abuse should be dealt with appropriately. Ultimately all transport workers should feel supported instead of being fearful that they will be blamed for the incident.

Yet, in the drive for profits, many employers want to make the use of agency work and the gig economy the norm on the transport network.

To cut costs and increase profits they are seeking to remove permanent workers and engage supposedly “self-employed" workers who are denied sick pay, holiday or pensions and live in a state of constant precariousness.  

This growing use of agency work comes on top of the continued outsourcing of renewals work. RMT has exposed that contracts with construction giants mean that Network Rail’s supply chain is riddled with casualisation, bogus self-employment and the use of payroll companies.

This is the model that employers have for transport workers and it can be defeated through united action and working with RMT’s parliamentary groups.

RMT is campaigning to get outsourced cleaning grades back in-house. The union is putting pressure on the London mayor to deliver on his pledge to review his cleaning contract with ABM with a view to in-sourcing these workers.

It is time for the mayor to show real leadership and bring in-house more than 2,000 Tube cleaners who are currently outsourced to the US company ABM.

RMT is also calling on the Scottish government to end the current ferry chaos in Scotland and commit to keeping CalMac ferry services in permanent public ownership when the current contract ends next year.

Time and again we see the private sector failing to deliver in transport, on ferries, buses or in rail. In fact, following the government recently taking the shambolic Transpennine Express franchise into public ownership, private transport companies now run less of the rail network than at any point since privatisation in 1993.

We are winning the argument for decent, publicly run services, as the public sees the results of the greed of the private sector, plundering what should be run in their interests, not the shareholders.

As a result, this union will continue to build the broadest possible alliances to step up the campaign to rebuild an integrated, directly employed and fairly paid workforce for all transport and energy sectors. I believe this country is ready for change — and that will only happen if we stand together and fight for it.