Offshore trade unions have teamed up to form a co-ordinated "fightback" against cuts and changes affecting workers in the troubled oil and gas sector.
The North Sea has been hit hard by plummeting oil prices, with industry body Oil and Gas UK estimating 65,000 jobs have been lost since 2014.
The newly-formed Offshore Co-ordinating Group (OCG), with representatives from Unite, the RMT, GMB, Balpa and Nautilus, says it believes that number is now significantly higher.
It said workers continue to experience attacks on their terms and conditions and there are growing fears over the impact of new working practices on health and safety.
This includes the increasing use of the three weeks on, three weeks off shift pattern which see employees working 12-hour shifts for 21 days in a row.
The OCG said: "Experienced trade union representatives in the sector report that workforce moral has never been lower.
"The impact on the north east and Scottish economies has also been severe and the offshore unions are far from satisfied that the nature and scale of recent government announcements is sufficient to meet the numerous challenges facing the region and industry.
"Despite the crisis currently affecting our members in the North Sea, the offshore unions are convinced there is a future worth fighting for.
"But building a sustainable future demands that the industry's response to current challenges must be based on collaboration, innovation and common high standards and a mature assessment of why costs in the UKCS (UK Continental Shelf) continue to be higher than similar jurisdictions."
In the first of its state of the industry reports, the OCG said oil and gas companies should stop demanding cuts from contractors, which it says have a direct impact on jobs and safety, and workers who have been made redundant or are at imminent risk of redundancy must be supported to find skilled employment at similar rates of pay.
The new body will publish research looking at working hours across a range of safety critical occupations in the spring.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here