UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps warned yesterday that rail strikes could cost thousands of jobs in the industry.
He was speaking only days before members of the RMT union are due to begin national walkouts, which will cause massive disruption to ScotRail services.
The strike days are on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
ScotRail has announced that the only trains it will run on these days will be some Central Belt routes.
The news that services connecting the north-east to other parts of Scotland were being axed has brought a furious reaction from the local business community.
Fergus Mutch, Policy Adviser at Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said the north-east is being cut off.
ScotRail skeleton service
He added: "If ScotRail has capacity to operate a skeleton service, it's not good enough for this to be just in the Central Belt. We want at least a.m. and p.m. 'lifeline services' to Aberdeen while strikes are ongoing."
The RMT union announced the strike action last week after talks over pay and redundancies fell through.
Mr Shapps had a message for unions yesterday when he visited the Siemens train maintenance plant in London.
The Transport Secretary said: "We will not be diverted from rail reform, from building a more agile and flexible workforce and from putting rail passengers first.
"Just as we cannot modernise the railway with obsolete technology, we cannot do it by clinging on to obsolete working practices from the past either. We have a rare opportunity here, to fix the issues that have long plagued the railway.
"But with strikes, all we're going to do is lose even more passengers, lose even more revenue, make further investment in the railway uneconomical and potentially lose thousands of railway jobs.
No justification for strikes
"Not only is there no justification for this action, it's going to cause misery. Misery to people looking forward to their first Glastonbury for three years. Misery to workers who can't get to their jobs. Misery to students, who can't take their GCSEs and A-levels. And misery to people waiting for hospital treatment, who may now miss their operation.
"And there's another group of people I'm worried about - rail workers themselves and their families. They will be damaged by this strike. It's not like the old days, when the RMT could shut down the nation's economy.
"Now, many rail users can work from home. For millions of passengers, rail is now a choice, not a necessity. Anything that stops people choosing rail, anything that drives away even more passengers than we've already lost has to be bad news for jobs and services.
"So today, I appeal directly to rail workers, who I think are less militant than their union leaders. Don't risk striking your industry out of a future. Don't risk striking yourselves out of a job. Don't pitch yourselves against the public.
"Let's fix this situation and get back to building a better railway."
Only Central Belt trains
ScotRail says it will only be able to run about 180 services on five routes in the Central Belt on next week's strike days.
The train operator usually operates 2,150 services on its full timetable.
It is currently running a reduced timetable of about 1,500 services due to a separate pay dispute with the drivers' union Aslef, which is now asking its members to accept a revised deal.
Events happening in Scotland on next week's strike days include the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, which runs from Thursday to Sunday, and a Barry Manilow concert at the Hydro in Glasgow on Thursday.
The industrial action, which has been described as the "biggest rail strike in modern history", is expected to involve more than 40,000 RMT members.