RAIL union RMT has requested an urgent meeting with a group of SNP MSPs who sought to discredit ongoing industrial action in the run-up to November’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow. 

The five Glasgow politicians should reiterate their support for the legal right to strike, the union said. 

RMT members working on Scotland’s railways have staged industrial action every Sunday for the past six months in a dispute with ScotRail over pay and conditions. 

Anti-union legislation has forced the union to hold another ballot of members on whether the action should continue, including during the Cop26 summit later this year.

But MSPs Bob Doris, James Dornan, Bill Kidd, John Mason and Kaukab Stewart suggested that the RMT action was politically motivated, describing the strikes as “an unhelpful way for the union’s London bosses to go about kickstarting those [climate] negotiations.”

The joint statement said: “The people of Scotland — and the watching world — may not look kindly on a rail union prepared to disrupt this vital summit.”

The RMT hit back, with general secretary Mick Lynch describing the MSPs’ claims as “ill-informed, inflammatory and insulting.”

In a letter to them, he wrote: “Personally, I find your parroting of the Murdoch press’s hackneyed anti-union rhetoric about union ‘bosses’ disappointing.

“It really is a bit rich for you or the SNP administration to call on us to come to the table and sort out the dispute when we have been asking the Scottish government to do just that.

“Time is running out and the position you and the Scottish government are taking is becoming increasingly isolated.”

An SNP spokesman said that the party’s MSPs have great respect for the RMT. He welcomed the invitation for a meeting, but reiterated concerns about the willingness to take industrial action during Cop26.