Mr Elsby said "sunrise industries" were "sinking"

"They forgot to mention that the new jobs might also be quite short-lived," he said.

"It looks as though the sunrise industries themselves are sinking gently in the West.

"We have seen Motorola bring promise to Scotland only to demonstrate that their jobs were as mobile as their phones.

"We have seen Seagate come to Scotland and then drift away over the Irish sea in search of new pots of EU money in the Irish Republic."

Mr Elsby said successive governments had "bent over backwards" to accommodate the wishes of Japanese car makers and mobile phone and computer chip manufacturers in the United States and Germany.

"What we are seeing now is not so much inward investment as industrial terrorism," he said.

Progress made

"It seems bizarre to me that when terrorists strike at Western society with guns and bombs the nations can act together to resist them - but that governments appear helpless to resist the global corporations who shift their production around the world like some kind of industrial pirates, plundering and moving on, leaving social devastation in their wake."

The union organised the conference to highlight what it sees as the importance of manufacturing to the economy.

Addressing the conference earlier, Mr McConnell said progress was being made to tackle the lack of competitiveness of Scotland's manufacturing industry.

He told the union audience that he wanted a "genuine, living and breathing partnership" with unions for a modern Scotland.

Jack McConnell was a keynote speaker

Mr McConnell said: "Not one where one side tries to get the other to change their mind, but one where we work together - shop stewards and union leaders, community workers and ministers, to make sure that Scotland is a better place in future than it is today."

He highlighted what he said were more than 50 initiatives now being worked on by the Scottish Executive to boost manufacturing in Scotland, but warned that there was no quick fix.

Mr McConnell said: "We need to use our own abilities best, rather than scouting the world looking for mobile plants that will come here for a temporary cost advantage.

"That is the way of the past for Scotland, not the way of the future."