The "new world order" promulgated by the US is a reinstatement of the "old world order of the British empire", according to SIPTU vice-president Mr Jack O'Connor.
The difference with this new order is that it is being run by a "new, leaner and meaner management in Washington", Mr O'Connor told delegates at the union's national women's forum in Galway last night.
Its main aim is to ensure that "the economic interests of corporate America" are advanced "relentlessly and ruthlessly with military support, when necessary", he said. The "new order" is being developed through multinational corporations which seek globalised markets and globalised production processes - characterised by a relentless race in which wages and jobs are continually undermined by the threat of competition from cheaper locations elsewhere, Mr O'Connor said.
While this recourse to overwhelming military force was truly shocking and awful, the events of the last few months had also seen the emergence of another "super power - people power", Mr O'Connor said.
"A healthy and vibrant trade union movement is an essential element in strengthening democracy and in consolidating people power," Mr O'Connor continued. "And for trade unions to develop their influence within society effectively, then the activism and commitment of the growing numbers of women workers must be developed through effective organisation and representation." Mr O'Connor said nothing we took for granted was now safe under the new economic arrangement. "Social services like healthcare and education are becoming commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace by private providers - and those who cannot pay their increasingly exorbitant prices are to be left with an increasingly under-resourced public sector offering the most basic levels of service."
Also addressing the forum's opening session last night, Ms Rosheen Callender, SIPTU's national equality secretary, said globalisation had the potential to create great prosperity and wealth, but so far it had tended to increase inequality and had involved bullying and discrimination against developing countries.
The recent invasion of Iraq and the subsequent threats of "consequences" for countries that were insufficiently supportive of military solutions were a terrible manifestation of the failure of politics and international institutions such as the United Nations, she said.
Ms Patricia O'Donovan, formerly of ICTU and now a director with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), spoke of the positive and negative effects on women of globalisation. Research conducted by an ILO colleague showed that changing labour markets associated with globalisation had increased both opportunities and pressures for women to migrate.
Increasingly, globally mobile workers were women, and a growing proportion of them were illegal migrants who had been trafficked. The conference continues today.
