Mobilisation towards formal employment in the healthcare system: A qualitative study of community health workers in South Africa

In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), community health workers (CHWs) play a critical role in delivering primary health care (PHC) services to vulnerable populations. In these settings, they often receive low stipends, function with a lack of basic resources and have little bargaining power with which to demand better working conditions. In this article, we examine CHWs’ employment status, their struggle for recognition as health workers, and their activities to establish labour representation in South Africa. Using a case study approach, we studied seven CHW teams located in semi-urban and rural areas of Gauteng and Mpumalanga Provinces, South Africa. We used in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observations to gather data from CHWs and their representatives, supervisors and PHC facility staff members. The rural and semi-urban sites CHWs were poorly supervised, resourced and received meagre remuneration, their employment outsourced, without employment benefits and protection. The lack of career progression opportunities demotivated the CHWs, particularly those keen to establish a career in health. In the semi-urban sites, CHWs established a task team to represent them that held regular meetings and often used violent and disruptive strategies against clinic, district and provincial management, which often led to tensions and conflicts with facility staff and programme coordinators. After a meeting with the local provincial legislature, the task team joined a labour union (NEHAWU) in order to be able to participate in the local Bargaining Council. Though they were not successful in getting the government to provide permanent employment, the union negotiated an increase in stipend from R2 500 (136 USD) to R3 500 (192 USD). In contrast, in the rural sites, the CHWs were not actively demanding permanent employment due to their employment contracts being partly managed by non-government organisations (NGOs) managements; they were fearful of being recalled from the government programme. After the study ended, during the height of COVID-19 in 2020, when the need for motivated and effective CHWs became much more obvious to decision makers, the semi-urban-based teams received permanent employment with remuneration between R9-11,000 (500-600 USD). The task team and their protests raised awareness of the plight of the CHWs, and joining a formal union enabled them to negotiate a modest salary increase. However, it was the emergency created by the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic that forced decision-makers to acknowledge their reliance on this community-based cadre. Hopefully this recognition, and the associated gains, will not fade as the pandemic recedes.