Welcome to the NEHAWU website, we appreciate your visit. We hope that you will find the information relevant and useful to you. As a public service organisation for the workers we are committed to being open and accountable to you, and we actively pursue ways to keep you informed about our activities. Our website is one of the ways we do this.

NEHAWU was founded on 27th and 28th June 1987 by workers from the Education, Health, Government and Social Welfare sectors. The Union is affiliated to COSATU - Congress of South African Trade Unions, which is the biggest federation in the country with over 1.9 million members.

NEHAWU is in COSATU for one strong workers' voice, to unite with workers from other progressive sections of our South African society. NEHAWU is the biggest Public Sector Union and the biggest in the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council, a negotiations structure for public service employees in South Africa.

NEHAWU is based on the following core principles:
• Worker control of the union;
• Non-racialism;
• Worker leadership;
• Democratic decision making through mandates and report backs;
• Worker solidarity: An injury to one is an injury to all!
• International Solidarity.

Government has called for submissions towards the NHI Green Paper by 12 October 2011 but this might be extended until December 2011 as indicated by the Department of Health’s Director General. NEHAWU will distribute material and hold workshops which will enable members, officials and office bearers to make submissions as part of the consultations which the Department of Health will undertake.
While NEHAWU agrees to the stated principles and objectives of the Green Paper, there are two issues to be mindful of the following:

(a) Firstly, the NHI is but one priority of the Government’s 10 Point Plan for the transformation of health in South Africa.
(b) Secondly, the NHI which NEHAWU advocates must be consistent with the principles of a developmental state and cannot become a profit-making scheme for the private health industry.

There are aspects of health transformation that as NEHAWU, we consider essential building blocks and must be financed by NHI to provide health services to all people of South Africa. The key non-negotiable feature is that, the fund must be publicly administered and must be the only fund that will pay for the health services that are delivered to all. This will ensure that all the collected funds are pooled and will allow for social solidarity so that high income earners and those who are wealthy can support the poor and vulnerable people such as the elderly and chronically sick. We will cover the details of the NHI in further bulletins and meetings.

NEHAWU is involved in Transformation, Democratisation and Restructuring at all levels of Government and Private Sector to ensure that the Public Sector reflects the community it is serving. Management Structures must change, delivery of services to communities must improve, communities and workers must be part of decisions and running of Public Institutions. Click here to JOIN!!

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Tel: +27 11 833 2902
Fax: +27 11 834 3416
Email: info@nehawu.org.za

PO Box 10812
Johannesburg, 2000
South Africa