This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the feasibility of unionizing LIS workers with special reference to the tertiary education sector in South Africa. The primary objectives of the study were to investigate the need for an organisation to address the industrial concerns of LIS employees and to investigate the organization most capable of addressing both the industrial and professional concerns of the sector. The majority of the respondents expressed the view that

more »

... ere is a need for an organisation to address the industrial issues of the LIS sector. The findings also reveal that there is substantial support for the professional association, as opposed to a generic trade union, to address the industrial and professional issues of the LIS sector. LIS sector has been represented primarily by three different professional associations to address the professional issues of the sector. However, Kusack (1984: 4) reveals that the number of professional employees within the sector, at the international level, is far fewer than the support staff. Essentially, the support staff outnumber the professional staff. This staffing split is also true for the South African LIS sector. Therefore, there is a substantial cohort of support staff who could see, as preferable, an organisation that would represent their specific support staff interests as opposed to an organisation that would represent the interests of the profession. For instance, the primary interests of the support staff centre around the industrial issues affecting the sector, whereas professional staff interests centre around professional issues. The South African workplace environment has been dominated by trade unions which have historically addressed the industrial issues of employees. The LIS sector is not precluded from this dominance of trade unions in addressing industrial issues. On the contrary, many professional members of the sector have actively participated in the activities of trade unions. Professional librarians and support staff, in the main, are members of generic trade unions. Simultaneously, a number of professional librarians and paraprofessional staff have found it necessary to belong to a generic trade union as well as to the professional association, the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA). However, the professional association has, over the years, restricted itself to addressing issues of a professional nature, thereby alienating itself from a large support staff base (Hooper 1986; Louw 1990) . The generic trade unions have played a parallel role, in keeping with the above mentioned two-stream approach, to that of the professional associations, that is, the professional associations address the professional concerns of the sector and the unions address the industrial issues of the same sector. However, the LIS sector is a single segment of a much broader community that the generic unions represent. It is contended that generic unions are so heterogeneous that the industrial issues of the LIS sector are not adequately addressed. The debate arising from the LIS sector being represented by a generic trade union and the professional association is whether a single organisation would provide better representation of the sector when addressing both industrial and professional issues. Guyton (1975) affirms the role of a trade union when he points out that trade unions have a significant role to play in any environment that has employees, including the library and information environment. He goes on to say, when describing the formation of the Los Angeles Public Library Union, that the formation of that union can be described as a 'unique adventure -a search by a group of librarians for greater control over their own profession and an exploration of unionism as a vehicle for gaining that control' (Guyton 1975: 85). This statement suggests that a single body can address both the professional and the industrial issues of the LIS sector.