Abstract
Community Home-Based Care (CHBC) work in South Africa has been labelled as reflecting unfair labour practices and poor organisation, and this has led to strikes and unionisation by these workers. This study suggests that challenges faced by CHBC workers is an outcome of neoliberalism in South Africa’s public health sector. In the light of this, the study examines the labour process and how care workers cope with their working conditions, as literature on the subject focuses mainly on overt means of resistance by care workers to the challenges they face, such as strikes. The study, therefore, fills a gap by presenting some covert forms of resistance which caregivers practice as ways of dealing with their working conditions. It provides an account of the responses of female care workers in Soweto in a context where the Department of Health (DoH) has not been able to explain their employment conditions and position in the employment sector. The study shows how the labour process for care workers is influenced by a complex employment structure that includes a clinic or Non-Profit Organisation (NPO); nurses and/or social workers; patients and their families; and the DoH. The way in which this employment structure operates differs from the standard employer, employee and customer relationship in most service industries. Furthermore, the study analysis the organisation of CHBC work through the Labour Process Theory (LPT), gendered debates, emotional labour and precariousness.
A qualitative approach was adopted and thus, data was collected through the process of triangulation to minimise any shortcomings of certain research techniques. In-depth interviews, observations and document analysis were utilised to answer the following research question: What are the perceptions of female CHBC in Soweto on their working conditions? The findings revealed that the working conditions of these workers extended their working hours and created unpleasant situations as a result of inadequate resources which increased the degree of precarity and the use of emotional labour for these workers. Various documents communicated efforts for change for these workers, however, the battle to detach this work from a precarious nature has not been won yet. In this study, the use of religion and various forms of covert resistance have proven to be a coping mechanism for these workers as they indicated that resisting in an open way was untenable, as this would result in them losing their jobs. These workers saw the value of their work, regardless of its unpredictable and gendered nature.
M.A. (Sociology)