In this chapter we examine the idea of a new labour internationalism through a detailed case study of a network organisation of democratic trade unions in the "South." While the idea of labour internationalism is not new, we show that the present era of neoliberal globalisation has produced contradictory effects. On the one hand global free trade has intensified competition between workers, whilst cyberspace has enhanced corporations' capacity to exploit regional and national labour standards differentials. However, the chapter shows that these transformations have also created a new horizon of opportunity for the emergence of global movements of resistance. The chapter provides an insight into one such instance-the emergence of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR) during the 1990s.

SIGTUR is a network organisation that is driven by democratic labour movements in the South (East, Southeast, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Southern Africa, Brazil). Significantly, the new formation is a response to the radical economic deregulation that beset Australia in the 1980s. Australian labour leaders were conscious of the potential impact that the denial of democratic union rights in the South would have on strong labour movements such as the Australian under a global free trade regime.

In essence, the chapter explores SIGTUR's potential in the struggle for social emancipation under the conditions of globalisation. Such a project challenges the market vision of the human person in society. Here the person is reduced to an individualistic, competitive economic being, without a broader sense of citizenship, moral being and moral relations. Social emancipation seeks to reclaim a full humanity, a social being connected to and struggling to transform society. This sense of social emancipation has the potential to reinvent the labour movement that has largely lost an emancipatory vision. This vision is a search for an alternative to work restructuring under globalisation, which asserts the primacy of social justice, equality and freedom in contrast to growing inequality and intensified exploitation of labour.

The chapter reveals the Janus-like features of globalisation. Cyberspace has consolidated the power of corporations, national states and the new institutions of global governance against an emancipatory project, while at the same time creating scope for the emergence of global movements. We critique Castells's thesis in his millennium volumes that contends that the new network capitalism has resulted in the labour movement being "historically superceded." We argue that Castells wrongly counterpositions the old and the new. In our view, SIGTUR is an example of how emancipatory potential of movements is only realized when the new is grounded in, and transforms the old. The chapter concludes with examples of the types of resistance that SIGTUR has generated as an illustration of our critique of Castells.