Workers are being made to pay a heavy price for the Coronavirus crisis and the underlying systemic economic crisis of the capitalist system. With job losses, wage cuts, attacks on sick pay, and anti-union victimisation, as we've seen with the sacking of Usdaw convener Richie Venton.

The extension of furlough until March could mark a timetable for further assaults by the government and profiteers.

As workers fight to defend their lives and livelihoods, we need to build a powerful movement to demand an entirely different normal, which abandons the poverty, inequality, exploitation and environmental desecration of the 'normal' we have suffered before and during the pandemic.

This Public Rally will have a panel of speakers who link the immediate struggles to defend workers' rights with a vision of what we need the organised working class to forge in struggle as our future.

Nothing is guaranteed about the future; it will be shaped by struggle. Struggles between the profiteering elite who want to restore profit margins by slashing jobs, wages and conditions and continued trashing of the planet - and the working class majority who stand to gain most from a society based on meeting real needs not profits.

At the heart of this must be democratic public ownership of key sectors and clean green production that could create at least 150,000 new jobs in Scotland. A Socialist, Green Recovery Plan - a Socialist Green New Deal.

We are honoured to have union leaders, union activists on the frontline, and the New York-based coordinator of TUED, which combines major unions in 17 countries in pursuit of a Just Transition to green energy production that defends and enhances the jobs and livelihoods of workers - as well as building towards a society based on the needs of its people and our planet, not the greed of polluting multinationals.

We need to build the forces to bring about the change urgently needed - not surrender to the onslaught on workers' lives and livelihoods cooked up by the billionaires, big business and their hired governments.

Book your free place for the Voice Rally today via Eventbrite - and contact others to get them along.