Coca Cola pretending to provide happiness to Asian workers exploitated in the Gulf

This ad, a video made by Coca Cola which has now been taken off Youtube, which is deeply disturbing and weird. Read about it here.

In March, Coke installed five special phone booths in Dubai labor camps that accepted Coca-Cola bottle caps instead of coins. In exchange for the cap from a bottle of Coke—which costs about fifty-four cents—migrant workers could make a three-minute international call. The ad shows laborers in hard hats and reflective vests lining up to use the machine—and grinning, for the first time in the video, as they wait. “I’ve saved one more cap, so I can talk to my wife again tomorrow,” one man tells the camera. More than forty thousand people made calls using the machines and 134,484 minutes of calls were logged during the 10 hours a day they functioned from March 21 to April 21 in unspecified labour camps in Dubai.

Stories from the South: Dhanalakshmi, from AREDS

Dhanalakshmi shared this story with us:
I have been working as a health worker with AREDS for the past 18 years. I have two daughters, one who is twenty years old, named Anuschka, doing her second year MBB and my second daughter is doing tenth standard. My husband works in a trade union sector with AREDS for unorganized workers. I started the work because of the support from my husband. My husband believes that, if you approach things with a positive state of mind, we can change things, we can do great things. That positive energy pushed me to go work in the same field. Now, I work with pregnant women and since I’m happy, I can give words of encouragement to the pregnant women. I believe that if pregnant women receive positive energy and words, they can give birth more easily and to a healthy child. So we should all strive to have positive energy and thoughts. 





I try to ensure continuous follow up and a trust relationship with each family. We’re not there just for one or two months, we follow the same family for over five years. It means we sort of become members of that family. Starting with the pregnant mother, being there for the delivery, to when the child turns five years old, it creates a real bond. 

My first daughter got in the nursing school on merit basis, because of her high marks on the final examination, so she didn’t have to pay admission, but the other expenses for uniforms and study material are still very high. We get some support from AREDS, and we also have some land that we farm. Both our parents have also contributed from their savings.  I’m also a member and the coordinator of a self-help group supported by SWATE, which also promotes the education of the girls of members and provides educational support for higher studies. 

CWM India assembles...

During my first visit to India and the partners here, I started off with the General Assembly of the Christian Workers Movement from India. People are sometimes quite critical towards trade unions, and a lot more so than towards NGOs. Trade Unions are sometimes described as trouble makers or used for political goals. I'm not saying nothing bad ever happens, but I still have never really understood why people are so critical. All our social security comes from the hard work trade unions have done. And when it comes to advocacy and lobbying, one thing trade unions have is a lot more representativity than NGOs. Social elections are a corner stone for trade unions and help guarantee some accountability and democratic structures.
Here, a couple of pictures of the CWM General Assembly, which took place in the mountains in Ooty, India on the 10 till 14th of July 2014.

Some impact stories from CWM

96% of the workers in India work in the informal economy. Domestic workers, construction, you name it, most is unorganized, and so no taxes are paid. An important doorway to get the informal sector organized, is through social security. Employers in India often don't want to provide their workers with certification, because of course it would expose them. And the social security system can't accept anybody on their simple claim that they are working in a specific sector. This is where the trade union comes in. Pathinathan, from the Sivanganai Diocese, where he presides the local Christian Workers Movement India unit, explains how they set up a workers union for the construction that was registered in 1999. Hence, they can offer ID cards that allow the members access to social security. This gives them the right to education support (especially for daughters, to stimulate girls going to school), pension schemes (of 1.000Rps per month after 60 years) and insurance in case of death or accidents (max. 100.000Rps). Currently, they have over 650 members that can thus enjoy these benefits.

When asked what was the most significant change he had witnessed, he also shared the story of Boss, a Hindu guy with two children, who is illiterate. After getting involved with CWM and their awareness program regarding the importance of education, Boss went to great lengths to send his two children to schools and motivate them to study. The daughter has obtained a B Sc in chemistry and the boy... has just become a teacher in a public school. Such a change in a generation time.


Xavier, the representative from CWM from Trichy, brought up Regina, a dalit christian. Her husband and Regina worked as day workers, coolies, for big landowners. The revolving fund program of CWM allowed Regina to get a goat, which provided milk for cheese and she could quit working as a day worker, though her husband continued. With the money she made from the goat, she managed to get a piece of land, allowing her husband to also quit working as a coolie and now they produce their own crops. Regina lives in a dalit village, where her example had a snow ball effect among several of the 15 families living there. Regina now serves as the general secretary for the local CWM unit...

Blog visite Philippines

De blog van de delegatie van LBC-NVK die momenteel op bezoek/solidariteitsreis is in de Filippijnen, op uitnodiging van KMU, een onafhankelijke vakbondsconfederatie waarmee ook Wereldsolidariteit en ACV contacten hebben .

Ici le lien vers le blog de la délégation du LBC-NVK qui pour le moment fait une visite/un voyage de solidarité aux Philippines, sur invitation de KMU, une conféderation syndicale indépendante avec laquelle aussi Solidarité Mondiale et la CSC ont des contacts.

W-Connect: our newsletter

W-Connect, June 2014

So, what have I been working on these past few days? Well, we also have a newsletter we use to share good practices among our Asia partners. With help, it has received a bit of a make-over, and I suggested a new name:"W-Connect" referring to the WSM slogan "We are all connected" and the W of World in WSM, connecting our partners. 

For this first newsletter of the 2014-2016 program, we felt it was appropriate to share what was achieved during the previous program (2010-2013) by the different partners of WSM, especially now that we all spend so much time writing, compiling and analyzing all the data. This way, you can also tell that all the effort put into the reporting was put to good use.

The first page provides some data regarding the indicators that WSM with its partners has achieved in the world. The following pages focus on Asia, with both numbers and some testimonies from you. The last page looks at the Launch workshop for the 2014-2016 program, which took place in March 2014 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

For our next newsletter, due in September-October, we'll write more on the current issues and program. 

If you wish to receive it, send a mail to bruno.deceukelier a t wsm.be.